


Driftwood

by icenineporcupine



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: A Date on a Sailboat, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Banter, But Mostly Banter & Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Pillow Talk, Post-BfA, Pre-Shadowlands, Shipwrecks & Nightmares & Hallucinations - Oh My!, Thros, Thros could go wrong, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, yes there is smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:06:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 23,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26686372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icenineporcupine/pseuds/icenineporcupine
Summary: After Sylvanas attacks the Loa of Death, but before she Breaks the World, rumors of the Banshee Queen surface in another familiar place: The Crimson Forest of Drustvar. Short on friendly allies, Alleria asks Mathias to help her track down her sister, only to discover that, after a few weeks in a golden Zandalari prison, the spymaster has other priorities—most of them involving a certain former pirate. But Azeroth isn't in the habit of letting its heroes rest, so what begins as a holiday on Tiragarde Sound certainly won't end that way.
Relationships: Flynn Fairwind/Mathias Shaw
Comments: 19
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello Fairshaw fandom. o/  
> Please accept this newbie's humble offering. <3 
> 
> I've been writing the saga of my own WoW characters since Wrath was current, so I'm not *exactly* a newbie, but this particular interlude devolved into a Fairshaw character study and my OCs took a backseat, so I thought I would package things up a bit and share it. 
> 
> It's also a loveletter to Kul'Tiras, because I am going to miss it deeply.

Alleria Windrunner materialized silently out of a rift and into a windowless, wood-paneled Boralus corridor that was, improbably, even darker than The Void. Fortunately, she didn’t require light to know her next steps. Treading soft-footed to the end of the hall, she stopped before a door—close enough that her next breath was filled with the pungent smell of old varnish and damp pine. She paused, briefly, listening for any signs of movement, then lifted a hand and rapped gently with a pair of knuckles. 

_Tap tap tap-tap-tap._ She waited ten seconds, then did it again. _Tap tap tap-tap-tap._

_For the Alliance._

She was one tap into the third iteration when the knob turned and the door opened a crack—not even far enough to put strain on the chain lock. The glow of her own eyes cast just enough light to resolve a single, venomous green eye tucked beneath a narrow, ruddy brow. Its piercing gaze softened ever so slightly it recognized her. 

“Commander…” 

“Shaw,” she said, somewhere between a whisper and just mouthing the syllable. “I’ve got something you should see.” 

“At this hour, it had better be good.” The Spymaster’s voice was a rasp that rivaled the bedrock at the bottom of Stormwind Stockades, and sleep had somehow only dropped it lower. “Or _very_ bad.” 

“Is both acceptable?” she parried. “What’s the matter? Here I thought we’d been having an insomnia contest. Do you mean to tell me you’ve forfeit since the war ended?” 

That emerald eye rolled impressively in its socket, framed in weary lines and tired shadows. 

“Come in,” he said— 

—and promptly shut the door again. 

Alleria snorted. 

_“Chivalrous,”_ she teased him, after crossing another rift to the other side of the door. 

“You must be mistaking me for your husband,” Shaw replied as he moved toward his desk. 

“Ah yes, that must be it. You’ll have to forgive me. I always seem to find myself squinting to see either of you.”

A match hissed to life as if in response, and the spymaster lit a candle, then quickly ensconced it in hurricane glass to keep the flame from devouring the endless stacks of parchment beside it. 

The tiny light cast the corner in a warm honey glow, but did little to illuminate the rest of the spymaster’s quarters.

“That chain lock is more trouble than it’s worth.” Shaw sighed a belated apology, sinking carefully into his desk chair. Only then did he rest his full gaze upon her. “It’s good to see you, Alleria, though I can’t say I expected you back in Boralus so soon— or at all, really.”

“Can’t say I did either,” Alleria admitted, “But it would appear my sister decided to wait until after the 7th Legion departed Kul’Tiras before attempting to infiltrate it.” 

Mathias’ eyebrows lifted at that, albeit measuredly. 

“You’re saying Sylvanas is _here?”_

“I believe she is, in a sense, though not exactly…” she spoke as accurately as she could, “At least not _yet…_ ” 

“I hadn’t realized the esteemed Windrunners were named for the air rushing from between their lips…” he replied, and Alleria couldn’t help but grin. She realized belatedly that a part of her had _wanted_ to provoke him, if only to hear his retort. “Care to try again in concrete terms?” 

Alleria could do better than that: she held out her empty palm, upon which a trio of neatly rolled scrolls promptly materialized, sealed with the Alliance crest but in deep violet wax instead of blue, and dusted with something that shimmered iridescent in the candlelight. _Not glitter,_ she’d explained to Mathias the first time he’d asked. It was _Ren’dorei tracing powder:_ impervious to everything except skin, and capable of transmitting the identity of every handler back to the sender— a way to ensure proper delivery and trace interceptions. 

The concept seemed to please the Spymaster enough, though she still watched as his jaw twitched at the scrolls and his gaze flickered across his quarters, as if contemplating fetching gloves. 

“I have operatives embedded with the Thornspeakers outside Falconhurst,” she began, as Mathias slowly got over himself and plucked the scrolls from her hands. He slid a dagger from seemingly nowhere— the desk? his bedclothes? The Void?—and made quick work of the seals. “The druids claim to have heard whispers of my sister from within the Dream. I’m happy to summari—”

“Just give me a moment, please,” Mathias said. He always preferred to gather his intelligence straight from the source, and she respected that. 

Were it anyone else, she’d have sent an envoy with the scrolls and a request to meet tomorrow. Yet instead she’d come to Boralus herself, watching as Mathias spread the reports across his desk and squinted down at them. He plucked a quill from its inkwell and made a few cursory scratches at the top margin, but then just as quickly put the pen back and simply read. 

The reports were written in a variant of Dath’Remarian cypher, reworked extensively by Alleria and her ally, Lord Veilflare, at the beginning of the Fourth War, with the hopes of thwarting any prying Sin’dorei eyes. Veilflare was one of the most accomplished cryptographers in all of Azeroth; his signature was in everything from old Farstrider cyphers Alleria had used in the Troll Wars, to the warding of the Violet Hold, to the shath’yar inversion runes that recently helped unmake N’Zoth. Alleria considered it almost absurdly fortunate that he’d been among the elves who defected with her to Stormwind after Argus. 

Yet not a week after she and Veilflare had sent a message to SI:7 to test their new invention, they’d received a response in Mathias’ impeccably formal script, utilizing the same code with barely an error, and offering his praises alongside a thoughtful critique of the code’s composition and various linguistic components. 

Veilflare had read it and laughed out loud— a rarity for the rather receding old elf. 

“Humans!” he’d balked, but with the resigned softness of a creature who was _entirely_ too fond of humans. 

Alleria understood the sentiment. Though— contrary to her ribbing— the man before her bore absolutely _no_ resemblance to her husband, she’d found herself growing entirely too fond of Mathias Shaw over the course of their last deployment in Boralus. Unlike the rest of the Alliance High Command, he didn’t seem particularly off-put by her use of the Void. She fathomed he’d seen worse—made deals with worse—in his career. He was resourceful, and quick-witted, and relentlessly focused—all the qualities Alleria valued most in an ally. 

And though Veilflare had made several more adjustments to the cypher, and they’d tested it extensively before finally introducing it into the field, The Spymaster still managed to decode it with impressive swiftness.

“Either I’m more tired than I thought, the code has errors, or this intel doesn’t make sense,” Mathias broke into her thoughts with a sigh. He rested his elbows on his desk and sent a hand over his mouth, smoothing his mustache and goatee, deep in thought. 

“I had the same initial reaction. However, the code is sound,” Alleria assured him. 

“And your operatives?” Mathias asked, not unkindly. “Their prose paints a rather… _eccentric_ portrait, even by Ren’dorei standards— no offense, Commander...” 

Alleria smirked. “None taken. They’re a strange couple, to be sure. But I trust them. Perrihelia Hewitt of Northshire: a human priestess-turned-paladin, verteran of Icecrown, long-serving healer at Stormwind Cathedral. And Alexaël Tideturner: a Quel’dorei born behind the Gilnean wall— a bard by trade and a Ren’dorei by circumstance. They were based in Drustvar for the majority of the war, and as such, they seem to have garnered the trust of the Thornspeakers, and learned a considerable amount from them. Seeing as the rest of my riftrunners are stretched thin across Azeroth of late, they both came highly recommended by Lord Veilflare.”

Mathias’ eyebrow twitched upward again at that. 

“This _Lord Veilflare_ certainly keeps colorful company.” 

“He’s a creature of extreme empathy, creativity, and competence, and judges others by little else,” Alleria said, “And as such, he seems to have a knack for befriending those inclined to use the most unconventional means to achieve the best possible ends. Surely you can relate.” 

“Perhaps I could—if empathy were my strong suit,” he said wryly.

“Vespervein is irreplaceable to you and you know it…” Alleria reminded him. Lord Veilflare’s _san’layn_ lover had, over the course of the war, delivered SI:7 a wealth of information on topics as niche and far-flung as vampyrism, Zandalari geography, dark ranger fletching tactics, novel antidotes to poisons, Azerite alchemy— 

“Nobody is irreplaceable,” Shaw said, but it sounded strangely like a tired line from a tired man: automatic and hollow. “Still, if either of them prove even _half_ as valuable as Vespervein, it would be impressive.”

“I believe they’ll prove themselves if given a chance.” 

“This account reads more like a Kaldorei Hymnal than a field report.”

“Cleric. Bard.” 

“To say the least,” Mathias snorted. 

He took one more glance at the parchment and then leaned back in his chair, fixing his gaze once more upon her. “It just doesn’t make _sense_ to me. Let’s say the report is true, and the Thornspeakers somehow recognize Sylvanas within the Dream, and she _is_ in fact speaking with the Drust. _Why?_ She had the entire Horde at her disposal all but months ago, and gave it up like she’d been _waiting to_ . Surely she’s not looking for allies. There are barely enough Drust left to build a _bonfire_ , much less an army. And the Kul’Tirans just finished re-banishing those that remain. If she were trying to strike an alliance, she could have been backing their insurrection—resurrection?—from the start…” 

“Do we have any evidence that she _wasn’t?_ ” Alleria asked, more out of curiosity than anything… 

Mathias leaned over to shuffle through some of the other files on his desk. After a moment, he withdrew a relatively thick dossier and tossed it to the edge of the desk closest to Alleria in offering. 

“We have evidence that she wanted _something_ from Kul’Tiras, but frankly nothing that implicates the Drust,” he said, as Alleria skimmed through the reports. Most of them were about Lady Priscilla Ashvane, which didn’t surprise her. The whole reason Shaw was still stationed here in Boralus and not back in Stormwind was to tie up any loose threads in the Ashvane Company’s dismantling, as well as to track down as many missing shipments of Azerite weaponry as possible before it fell into the wrong hands. Just because there was a new armistice with the Horde didn’t mean there weren’t 500 other factions just waiting to blow them to bits…

“Sylvanas arranged to spring Ashvane from her cell in Tol’Dagor, but the aftermath heavily suggested that their bargain involved various plots in Naz’jatar,” Mathias continued. “The biggest Horde presence in Drustvar, meanwhile, was a goblin mining operation. And before you ask, SI:7 thoroughly inspected it with the assumption that it could be a front for something else, but it was 100% Gallywix— All greed. No guile.” 

Alleria hummed, appeased, and closed the dossier, placing it back on the desk. She leaned her elbows delicately against the edge of the rolltop and rubbed her temples. 

“Look, I know it all sounds far-fetched—”

“Pun _absolutely_ intended, I hope…” snorted Mathias immediately, and for a moment Alleria blinked at him, trying to piece together what the pun even _was._ Mathias, for his part, blinked back, as if he wasn’t sure what sense of humor had just possessed him. 

She frowned as the joke finally occurred to her. 

“You know… dogs… made of sticks… _fetching—”_ he began, sounding strangely exhausted with himself. 

“I got there,” she assured him, lifting a curious brow. “I think you’ve spent too much time with King Greymane…”

“Likely,” sighed Mathias, although he didn’t sound convinced. An odd beat passed between them that Alleria had no idea how to parse. “Sorry. Continue, please…” 

“I don’t think my sister is looking for allies…” Alleria said, “I think she’s looking for _avenues…”_

“Avenues for _what,_ though?” 

“I’m not sure. But to the extent that I still presume to know how she thinks, I…” she paused, selecting her next words carefully… “I know most—if not all—the Alliance considers the burning of Teldrassil to be a senseless and unprovoked act of malice. And can’t deny the malice of it, nor the lack of provocation, but _senseless_ is not a word that has ever described Sylvanas. Everything she does has a purpose, and stoking the ire of the Kaldorei doesn’t strike me as a clear enough purpose on its own _._ She had to have wanted Teldrassil for something else…”

“And now you think she wants Gol Inath…” Mathias followed along, as she’d known he would. He ground his molars. “Why _now_ , though? Teldrassil was nearly a year ago. And why not Nordrassil? Or Vordrassil? Or Shaladrassil. Light, why are there _so many_ —”

“It _might_ be Nordrassil, for all I know,” Alleria pressed. “It might be _all_ of them, Mathias. Something tells me she wants those trees. And preferably _dead…_ ”

“That is _not_ the sort of claim I would bring to Whisperwind without _flawless_ corroboration,” the Spymaster warned. 

“Well I _haven’t_ brought it to Whisperwind, have I?” she replied, “I brought it to _you,_ Master of Flawless Corroboration.”

The Spymaster tossed her a truly put upon look. But there was something else hidden beneath it— a sharper concern glinting in his eyes in the candlelight. A tightness in the lines of his face that spoke of distress more personal than professional. It took Alleria by surprise— after all, this was _her_ sister they were talking about, not his… 

“You really think she’s in Drustvar…” he muttered. 

“I don’t know, Mathias. But I do know this lead is more substantial than anything the rest of our operatives—or the Horde’s, for that matter— have managed to unearth since her failed attempt at killing the Zandalari Death Loa. It would be unwise to disregard it without at least trying to—” 

A rustle of sheets and a squeaking bedspring sent Alleria starting and spinning around. 

“Who—”

“It’s fine,” said Shaw, calmly. 

Alleria’s eyes had mostly adjusted to the light at this point, but she still found herself squinting at the disheveled mass of Shaw’s blankets, and the unknown entity tangled within them. A stream of rather long dark hair cut a stark river across one of the pillows.

“You… didn’t mention you had other company...” she said. 

“It wasn’t pertinent,” Mathias replied. He’d returned to pouring over the Riftrunner reports, clearly hoping Alleria would take the hint and refocus her attention as well. 

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.” 

“You didn’t.” He turned a page. “I sleep to be woken and he sleeps like the dead…”

Almost as if to specifically refute him, the man in Shaw’s bed snuffled through a snore and squirmed, rolling over. As his breathing settled again, Alleria spotted the shadow of a tattoo across his neck: a Kul’Tiran anchor twisted in kelp. 

She blinked, realizing she’d found herself contemplating that same tattoo before, less than two months ago, as the damp and disheveled pirate-turned-honorable-captain Flynn Fairwind had nearly collapsed into a dining chair at Proudmoore Keep, flooding the table with an assortment of artifacts, a pile of Thalassian missives, and what seemed like a entire harborful of panicked tears…

… about abandoning Mathias in Zandalar.

 _Oh._

At the time, she’d interpreted the Captain’s tearful indecorum as a lack of professionalism—or a fear of punishment, perhaps, for losing a valuable Alliance operative. 

In retrospect, she supposed the truth should have been more obvious. Particularly when the King had immediately sent his freshly-retrieved Spymaster back to Kul’Tiras to round up what amounted to an amateur smuggling ring, instead of having him attend to the probable _mountain_ of problems that had amassed on the mainland during the war. Shaw likely would have balked at being sidelined entirely, and this was the right size task to keep him in the game, but not _too_ busy for a little R&R. 

She found herself smiling vaguely. The Boy King was a gentle soul, indeed…

“Do you have a proposal for me, Commander?” Mathias asked, beginning to sound truly impatient and not just his typical dry-witted self. He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Or are you hoping I’ll simply draft you one while you stand there and ogle my partner?”

“Sorry, Mathias. I just...” Alleria tore her attention back to him, still smiling. She lifted a curious brow. “I have to say, he is the _very last creature_ I thought you’d go for…” 

“And _you_ are the _very last creature_ I thought would doubt the extent to which opposites attract,” he replied. “How is the High Exarch of late?” 

“Touché,” she conceded, “He’s fine. The tensions in Arathi finally seem to be cooling.”

“I know,” Mathias said. Because of course he knew. “Shall we continue?”

“Right,” Alleria apologized, “I do in fact have a proposal. I want to see if we can verify the whispers in these reports and figure out what exactly Sylvanas is plotting. I’d like to send a small team to investigate the gateway in Gol Inath…” 

“Thros, you mean. You want to send a strike force into _Thros…”_

“Yes, if it comes to that.” 

“I hardly think Jaina would approve of a plan to purposefully send Alliance operatives back into a death realm she barely survived…” 

“And I didn’t _bring_ this to Jaina. Or Tyrande. Or my husband. Or The King,” Alleria, reiterated, tensely. “I’m bringing this to _you._ You’ve served the crown of Stormwind since you were barely old enough to hold a dagger. And you know as well as I that Sylvanas would see the city razed without blinking. Why are you hesitating _now_?”

“Because there’s barely a _shred_ of evidence—”

“So help me _collect_ the evidence! That’s your _job!”_ She hissed, but even as she spoke she hadn’t missed the way his eyes had betrayed him, flickering to the bed. Realization hit her like the thud of a paladin’s hammer. She softened in spite of herself, shutting her eyes and sucking in a breath. “That came out wrong. I’m sorry. I… I understand. You don’t want to admit she could be here, because you don’t want to admit that _he_ could be in danger. But denying it isn’t going to protect him. I _know_ you know that…” 

Mathias said nothing for a time, eying her like an animal well aware it was in the crosshairs of a huntress. 

“The last time the Alliance ‘sent a small team’ to investigate rumors of Sylvanas,” he said finally, meddling with the edge of one of the parchments. “... I nearly died in the clutches of a massive magical hurricane, spent three weeks locked in a golden cage, and wound up smitten with an ex-pirate. As inexcusable failures go, I count it among my best. And I’d be a fool to think a repeat performance could go any better.” 

_“Or,”_ countered Alleria, wickedly: “You might _actually_ die in the clutches of a massive magical forest fire, spend three weeks locked in a _wicker_ cage, and come back with a handsome Thornspeaker tucked under your other arm, since a Kul’Tiran accent appears be your one true weakness…” 

It was _deeply_ unprofessional and entirely uncalled for, but it was worth it to see the look of abject horror on the Spymaster’s face. For once, he had absolutely nothing to say. 

“I’m _kidding_ ,” she insisted, after relishing in his bewilderment for just a moment. “I should have clarified much earlier, I’m not asking for you to lead the team. I just want your help in assembling it. I need operatives with druidic expertise and unflinching resolve, even in the face of death itself. Hewitt and Tideturner are resourceful but green, as you already noted. And though the Thornspeakers have been accommodating when it comes to information, none of them are willing to travel into Thros...”

“Imagine that,” snarked Mathias. “When I asked you if you had a proposal for me, Commander, I didn’t realize you’d already offered my hand to a Thornspeaker as a bribe. How embarrassing for you, to have to inform them that I’m already spoken for.”

Alleria laughed. It may have taken a moment this time, but there was always a retort. 

“No, no marriage. No Thornspeakers. I just want—”

“I know what you want,” Mathias admitted then. “You want me to go groveling to Shandris so you don’t have to…” 

“She doesn’t trust me. Not that I blame her. The bad blood between our kind goes back for millenia…” Alleria said, “Millenia she doesn’t even acknowledge I’ve lived…” she added bitterly, after a pause. 

Mathias lifted a brow, “And what about Greymane? The worgen?” 

“Greymane wants nothing to do with me. I remind him too much of my sister, if I had to guess.”

“From what I hear, he’s not overly fond of your husband whispering in King Anduin’s other ear lately either,” he said, smirking. 

“I suppose he wouldn’t be…” Alleria admitted, sighing. “Help me cut through all this political nonsense, Mathias. Find me some druids willing to take risks instead of sleeping beneath trees. _Help me track her down.”_

After another protracted staring contest, the Spymaster finally relented, closing his eyes and rubbing at his temples. 

“I suppose that’s a request I can accommodate, Commander, though it may take some time—” 

“S’way, _wayyyyy_ too early for you t’be working, Mattie…” Captain Fairwind’s sleepy, slurred voice suddenly reached toward Mathias’ back like a lazy, lecherous tentacle. “Come back to bed…”

“In a minute…” Mathias answered, almost automatically. 

“Sounds like you’re needed elsewhere, _Mattie,”_ Alleria goaded, gently. 

Mathias glared envenomed daggers at her. 

“Call me that again, _Allie,_ and I’ll withdraw my assistance, and you will _beg_ for the void to swallow you permanently.” 

“I’m just shocked you let _anyone_ get away with it, frankly,” she admitted.

“I’m not letting anyone do _anything._ He’s a reckless bastard who gets off on trying my patience,” he grumbled, but the warmth in his voice was unmistakable. 

_“So_ true!” Captain Fairwind agreed, buoyantly, proving he was perhaps much more awake than either Mathias or Alleria had given him credit for. “Pretty face, though. Nice ass, too. And I hear he’s an _azerite weapon_ between the sheets. Not even sure what that means, really...” 

“Flynn, _honestly_ —”

“I _am_ being honest!” he declared, the smug grin evident in his every word, “You’ve made a right honest man out of me, Spymaster…”

Mathias smeared his hands over his face, but even in the dim light Alleria had no trouble spotting the uptick at the corner of his lips, and the blush slashing like a pirate saber across his freckled cheeks. 

“Now I’m _really_ interrupting…” Alleria said. “I’ll leave you be…” 

“No,” Mathias insisted. “This is important—”

“Yes, but you just said it will take time. I’m not expecting you to pull druids out of the Void.”

“Of course not, but I agreed to help you, so _let me do my damned job_ ,” he picked up his quill again and brandished it at her like an absurdly soft knife. “I’m not going to go asking Shandris for any old elf she’ll spare me. Tell me what other criteria you’re looking for in these operatives.”

Alleria tilted her head, contemplating. 

“Well, as I said, they should be willing to risk their lives to bring Sylvanas to justice—which honestly should sound appealing to most druids these days. Other than that? Well, I’m no expert, but I would imagine those with more experience inside the Emerald Dream or with other forms of spirit walking would fare better. Someone with a knack for wayfinding and cartography would certainly be welcome—” 

“Not to brag, but I’m _great_ at wayfinding,” Fairwind chimed from the bed. “Not bad at cartography either. Taught myself, just like reading and writing. Wouldn’t happen to need somebody good with a sword and quick with a smile, would you?” 

_“Druids,_ Flynn. We need _druids,_ ” Mathias complained, “And I wouldn’t send you into Thros even if you were Archdruid Malfurion himself.” 

“Thros! Yeah, no. Hard pass on that one. Sorry,” said the Captain. “Tides blessings to the poor treehuggers who end up on that expedition.” 

Alleria blinked, “What do you know of Thros, Captain Fairwind?” she asked, curiously. 

“Enough to stay far away from the rocks of Fate’s End when I take a ship north,” said Fairwind. “Old wives tale says Fate’s End is the rear end of blighted lands— a back door, so to speak. Not sure whether it’s true or not, but there are enough shipwrecks on that blasted pebble of an island that I’m not about to question it…” 

“Neither am I,” said Mathias, bluntly, clearly not liking the fascinated look he saw developing on Alleria’s face. 

“No no, of course not. We’ll stick to Gol Inath for now,” Alleria said. The Spymaster didn’t look convinced. She figured that was only fair, given how she’d just spent the better part of thirty minutes badgering him. “When does he sail again?” Alleria asked, carefully. 

“Friday,” said Shaw. 

“Maybe Thursday, depending on the weather…” amended Fairwind. 

Alleria watched Mathias’ throat tighten in a swallow, and his fingers meddled with the corner of the parchment again. It was strange to see him show even the slightest hint of vulnerability, but somehow reassuring at the same time, to know he was, in fact, human. The poor man had probably been longing for a vacation that now looked increasingly improbable… 

“Take some time for yourself…” she said, gently. 

“Smart lady,” mumbled Fairwind from the bed. “Don’t know her, but I quite like her. What did you say her name was? _Allie?_ ”

Mathias actually _laughed_ at that: a sudden bark, sharp like absolutely everything else about him. 

“It is now,” he said, his shoulders shuddering in silent chuckles. 

“You knew that would happen…” She accused, frowning.

“Might’ve been banking on it,” Mathias admitted, carefully wrangling control of his grin. Even after his expression had neutralized he still looked ten years younger, and Alleria was again left considering how little she knew of this other side of the Spymaster. 

“I’ll tap some shoulders and catch up with you on Friday at two, after the dock rounds,” he said, with some finality. “Meet me in the harbormaster’s upstairs lounge. I should have answers for you then.” 

“Thank you, Shaw. I appreciate it.” 

Alleria turned to leave, silently ripping open a void rift in the center of the room. 

“Alleria—” Mathias called after her. 

She paused and glanced over her shoulder. 

“I’d…” He paused, sighing. “I would greatly appreciate your discretion regarding the details of my personal life…” 

Alleria smiled. 

“Secrets are always safe with the Void, Mathias. And besides, if you can somehow continue to be discrete about _details_ like _that—_ ” she cast a final long glance at the bed, where Fairwind appeared to have dozed off again, sprawled bare-assed in the blankets, “Then I believe you may be the most formidable keeper of secrets Azeroth has ever known.”

She winked at him, and Mathias shook his head in defeat as she gracefully saw herself out.

—— 

Mathias stared into the middle distance where Alleria had vanished for a long while, before finally turning and rolling up the Rendorei reports. He slipped them into his middle drawer next to several other pieces of high priority correspondence, locking them away and reaching for a blank piece of parchment. He almost reached for his quill as well, but stopped, letting his empty hand fall upon the desk. He rubbed at his eyes with the other. Greymane he could handle, but he wasn’t looking forward to composing a message to Shandris. Particularly not about this topic… 

Sylvanas, in Drustvar. Of all the damned corners of Azeroth for the banshee to pick, it had to be Drustvar… 

It felt strangely personal, even though Mathias had absolutely no ties to the province itself. It was still Kul’Tiras. Still just a little bit too close to home… 

Mathias found himself staring at the blank parchment before him as the last thought fully registered, creeping upon him at half speed. _Home…_

For as long as he could remember, Stormwind had been his home. Through war after war, decimation and repair, tragedy after tragedy, Ghost Wolf King and Lion Cub Son. After every deployment, every mission, Mathias had always returned home to the embrace--or the cage—of those towering limestone walls. It was such a given he’d barely ever considered there might be an alternative… 

He’d told Flynn as much, about a week ago— the first time they’d ever attempted to skirt around the edges of the strange shape that was their future together. They’d been quite a sorry pair in that conversation: Mathias the paragon rogue, skulking through the dark, trying to feel out boundaries without triggering any traps, and Flynn the weathered sailor, spotting the tip of an iceberg and taking his ship around it at a nearly absurd distance, not daring to entertain what might lay beneath the surface. He’d called his ship his home— _“or maybe the entire ocean. She makes any place_ _feel_ _more like home, at least. Long as I can spot her from a hilltop or something, I know I’m never far…”_

Mathias had huffed and called him oblique. Flynn had thanked him and insisted he had a _lot_ of great angles, _actually,_ and would he like to see some? Or maybe bend him into several more…? 

Mathias had kissed him to shut him up, or maybe to shut _himself_ up before he’d said something sentimental and irrevocable… something like _I think maybe you’re my ocean..._

Mathias draped his arm across the back of his chair and hung his chin over it, gazing across the room at the bed, and at Flynn in it, sprawled shamelessly upon his stomach and taking up almost the entire thing… just like he’d somehow and suddenly and _infuriatingly_ managed to take up the entirety of Mathias’ heart. 

Full hearts weren’t made for work like his. Full hearts made for distracted heads. He cringed at all the cracks in his composure he’d just shown Alleria. Weaknesses that he’d have scorned in another agent only months ago were apparently now readily on display by none other than Mathias Shaw himself, Master of Spies. It was an unmitigated disaster, if he were honest. 

And Sylvanas, in Drustvar... 

“Are you just gonna sit over there and keep spying on me, Mattie?” Flynn said, finally. He cracked open an eye and peered across the room. 

He curled his fingers in Mathias’ blankets, squirming sleepily in a way that was somehow both endearing and far too suggestive. The flush stung across Mathias cheeks again, but he rose, finally, and crossed the room.

“You couldn’t _possibly_ have just kept quiet for ten Lightforsaken minutes…” he accused, climbing back into bed and then draping himself across Flynn’s back. 

“Me?! Stay tactfully silent in a potentially sensitive situation?” Flynn parried, squirming beneath him with a grin. “Hold on, let me check my resume…” He stretched an arm across the bed toward the side table and snatched some random piece of parchment Mathias had left by the lamp the night before. “Let’s see. Tactful silence… tactful silence…” he pretended to peruse the script, squinting at its cipher so intently he seemed to be trying to break it through sheer willpower.

“Nope!” he concluded, jubilantly. “Not on there.” 

Mathias smirked and rolled his eyes, plucking the parchment from Flynn’s fingers and casting it aside. It settled precariously upon the opposite bedside table, where he knew it would bother him until he picked it up and filed it properly. But right then the nag of the misplaced missive wasn’t enough to compete with the mollifying lure of the body heat beneath him. 

He rose just enough to remove the shirt he’d donned to appear decent to his early morning visitor, making a lazy castaway of it as well. He tried not to dwell on how sloppy it all was as he nosed the captain’s long auburn locks aside and kissed the anchor inked upon the nape of his neck. His hair smelled like sea salt and soap—Stormwind barracks soap— _Mathias’ soap—_ and the realization sent something dark and unfamiliar and strangely clingy coiling in his chest—not unlike the kraken tattooed across the rest of Flynn’s back. 

Mathias kissed his neck again and latched on this time with a hint of teeth, relishing the thrum of Flynn’s pillow-smothered laughter shuddering through his ribs. A week old sunburn had just about finished peeling off his shoulders, fading to a rich, rosy tan, and Mathias traced its edges with careful fingertips, unable to recall a single time in his life he’d ever allowed himself to be _quite_ so indulgent… 

“That gnomish device you call a brain needs some oil,” Flynn commented, after a long moment. “I swear I can hear the gears turning in your skull; can’t be very good for stealth.” 

“Do you even _have_ a resumé?” he asked, if only to slow his swift descent into sentiment. It was uncharted territory, likely for both of them, and while Flynn may have been comfortable just sailing straight into the unknown, Mathias couldn’t help but want a map...

“Of course I do!” Flynn insisted, feigning outrage. He turned his cheek on the pillow, side-eying Mathias sourly. “The Harbormaster wouldn’t keep me around if I didn’t have marketable skills!”

Mathias snorted softly into Flynn’s hair, right behind the ear. “More like black-marketable skills…”

“Oh what’s this? The _Master of Spies,_ come to judge me on the merit of my under-the-table transactions?” 

Everything changed all at once— Flynn rolled out from beneath him like the deck of a ship tossed by wave, falling onto his back. In the same motion he grabbed Mathias by the waist and dragged him back aboard, this time chest to chest, nose to nose. 

He was grinning like a shark, and his eyes were a swirling, sparkling blue around his pupils. They pulled at something inside Mathias like the Maelstrom. 

“...I’m not judging...” he whispered, only vaguely remembering what they were talking about a moment ago. _I’m drowning, is what I’m doing…_ he thought. For an instant, all his instincts told him to fight it—to swim back to the surface. 

“That’s some look in your eye, Mattie…” Flynn said, then, “I’m not sure if I’m marked for murder or what…” 

“I’m afraid that’s classified…” 

Flynn huffed and rolled his eyes, shifting a bit until he’d managed to untangle his legs from the sheets. He bracketed Mathias’ hips with his thighs, walking lazy fingers up his freckled chest. 

“Y’know, _Spymaster Shaw,”_ he goaded. “Someday, I think I might have to stage a grand heist right into the depths of this securely sealed heart of yours, just like that Zandalari vault…” 

“You wouldn’t survive it…” 

“No, likely not,” Flynn agreed, with far more gravitas than Mathias had known he was capable of. His fingers reached Mathias’ collarbone and then skipped to his chin, nudging his goatee with a knuckle. He smirked wistfully. “... not without you to help me through, anyway.” 

Mathias felt like the whole bed had been knocked by another wave, only this time Flynn hadn’t moved at all. 

“What if…” He swallowed thickly. “What if I asked you not to sail on Thursday… even if the weather’s fit?” 

Flynn lifted a brow, surprised. 

“What does it matter whether I sail Thursday or Friday. You’re just going to work the whole time,” he parried. 

“I… was thinking…” Mathias began, carefully. 

“I _know_ you were. Squeaky gnomish gears, remember?” 

Really, Mathias wasn’t sure he was _thinking_ at all, or if perhaps he’d _ceased_ to think and this was some other madness entirely. 

“...what were you thinking?” Flynn coaxed then, gentler. 

“I was thinking that I’ve spent over a year in Kul’Tiras but haven’t seen much of it, save a brief stint in Stormsong, and the harbor, which I think I know well enough to walk in my sleep.”

“You probably _do_ walk it in your sleep—” 

“So what if we took a day? And took one of the smaller boats… and you could … show me around?” 

“You want to go _sailing_ with me,” Flynn repeated, making a three-act drama of trying to unplug his ear with his pinkie finger. “You _hate_ sailing, Mattie…”

“I hate _rough seas!_ But a calm day on the Sound, in the sunshine, with you telling me all the local lore…? I bet you know all sorts of wild stories that the ferrymen don’t: things a spy like me might find—stop laughing! Why are you laughing!?” 

Flynn was so incredulous he was giggling. 

“You’re _really_ telling me you want to spend a whole day stuck on a two man skiff in the middle of the Sound, _frying_ this freckled hide of yours and _listening to me blather_.” 

“That’s _exactly_ what I want…” Mathias insisted. 

Flynn’s giggles faded and for a moment he just stared up at Mathias, as if perhaps he’d never quite seen him before. Perhaps he hadn’t. Perhaps Mathias hadn’t _let_ him. Something shivered in his chest. He swallowed again.

“... that is, if it’s something you’d also enj—” 

Flynn clamped his hands on either side of Mathias’ face and kissed him hard. His whole body seized in shock only to melt again within a heartbeat. He kissed back with a sigh. 

“Thursday then, if the weather’s good,” Flynn whispered to his lips, still holding his face. He was wearing a dopey smile that Mathias deeply feared his own face was mimicking. Light help him. “I’ll secure the boat from Cyrus, and we’ll sneak out from the lower docks near the market...”

“I don’t want _any_ fuss. Tell Cyrus you need the boat for shellfishing or something…” 

Flynn barked a laugh, jostling him. “You’re _hopeless_ , mate. You can shellfish on the bloody _beach_. Please never go undercover as a sailor—” 

_“Whatever,”_ Mathias grumbled. “Think of _something_. Use your resumé.”

That earned him a playful _thwack_ to the ass. 

“Oh, I’ll think of something alright,” Flynn assured him in the least reassuring tone possible. He folded his hands behind his head upon the pillow and grinned magnanimously. “When shall we depart, beautiful?” 

Mathias eyed him warily. “Let’s make it five-thirty?” 

“Ugh, you madman!” Flynn balked, grin evaporating. “Do you want me to be able to sail or not?”

“Six,” he tried.

Flynn stared at him flatly.

“Six-thirty. And that’s my final offer.” 

“I can live with that,” Mathias conceded. 

“I certainly hope so. The fact that I’m even _entertaining_ a time of day before nine should tell you exactly how much I like you, Mattie.” 

“Exactly?” Mathias asked, his lips twitching as he fought a grin. 

Flynn rolled his eyes, “And you call _me_ the ridiculous one—” 

“No wait, this is an important metric, and I want to fully understand. You’re willing to wake up a full two-and-a-half hours before nine. You like me _exactly_ two-and-a-half hours much? What does that _mean?!_ ”

“It _means_ that’s how long we’re likely to last on that boat before one of us throws the other overboard,” Flynn retorted.

Mathias snorted. 

“If you throw me overboard I’m dragging you with me.”

“Oh, _very_ mature,” Flynn scoffed, his eyes glinting again. “But not if I drag you first…!” 

“That doesn’t even—” 

Mathias didn’t manage to finish before Flynn flipped him on his back and tossed the blankets over their heads.

 _“Sure it does,”_ he hushed victoriously beneath Mathias’ ear as the already dim room descended into secret darkness around them. 

—— 

Flynn awoke, predictably, to an empty bed. Broad daylight was already streaming in around the edges of the shutters, and even if it hadn’t been, he’d so far only succeeded at keeping the spymaster captive in his sheets during their voyage back to Kul’Tiras. Flynn counted himself lucky that he’d been able to lure the restless man back to bed for even a few hours after their midnight visitor had left. 

He’d played the fool, and his night vision didn’t rival any elf’s, but he’d recognized Alleria Windrunner from the moment she’d teleported through the door. He’d caught glimpses of the strange, void-possessed elf before, usually while distractedly scanning the deck of the _Redemption_ from the _Middenwake,_ hoping for a glimpse of a certain tight-laced redhead. 

Then he’d unexpectedly found himself across a table from her at Proudmoore Keep, emotionally wrecked and unprepared for the barely-restrained horror of the magic that seemed to ebb and flow through the air around her in whispering tides. 

_You left him for dead._ The whispers had hissed in his ears, seductive and cruel. _Did you think yourself capable of anything else? Worthless, pathetic pirate dog. You've never done anything but run with your tail between your legs. He’s dead, and it’s your fault. You want to be with him? Why don’t you kill yourself too? You’d be more valuable that way. More valuable to Us…_

He’d known, even in the state he’d been in, that those thoughts weren’t his own, not entirely anyway. He’d done his best to drown them out with a small mountain of mashed potatoes and more of Lady Proudmoore’s wine than had likely been respectable. Alleria’s remarks to Mathias last night confirmed he’d made a disastrous first impression. But the chill the eldest Windrunner had left in his blood certainly couldn’t be considered much better. He’d hoped the end of the war meant he’d never see her again. 

It had been fascinating to witness how well she and Mathias got along. Flynn himself was proof of how much the Spymaster appreciated a capable verbal sparring partner. But there was something else between them too: a shared sympathy. They were both black sheep in their own right, shackled to the shadows by duty and necessity, and surviving by the strength of their own discipline. 

Flynn couldn’t help but wonder if Mathias could hear the whispers in the Void around her, and what those whispers said to him. 

Regardless of the answer, there was a more pressing whisper to worry about. One that hadn’t come from the Void at all:

_Sylvanas in Drustvar._

The news had sent Mathias into a spiral of anxiety, and Flynn would have been lying if he’d claimed to be unbothered. He rolled upon his stomach with a groan and buried his face in the pillows, trying to smother his sudden deluge of thoughts the same way he’d smothered a lifetime of bad hangovers. 

A tiny, crinkling _crunch_ beneath his weight surprised him, and he stuck a hand between his chest and the mattress to retrieve a scrap of parchment.

It was ripped from something larger, its edges ragged but impressively straight, as if it had been carefully creased before being torn. The first five letters or so were crossed out, but not thoroughly enough to prevent Flynn from reading them. They didn’t belong to any word in Common, at least not in the order written. Mathias had begun the note in code out of habit before realizing himself and starting again in plain text. 

Flynn was smiling like a fool before he’d even begun to read: 

_F —_

_My apologies about the mess. Contrary to appearances, it’s not actually glitter._

_I can explain. Over dinner tonight, maybe? I keep walking by that one stall on the east side of the market— the one run by Yaungol refugees, with the enormous brazier. Whatever they roast on it always smells incredible. Do you know the one I mean?_

_I’m also open to other ideas._ _Within_ _reason_ _._

_— M_

_P.S. — It honestly suits you, you know. The glitter. I might need to make this particular mistake more frequently._

_P.P.S. — Please burn this immediately._

_Not a chance, love,_ Flynn thought, reading the note several times before giving in to miserable impulse and kissing it as if it were the man himself. He honestly didn’t understand what half of it meant. What glitter? But it barely mattered. They had dinner plans. And plans to sail on Thursday. And Mathias was apparently now leaving him notes in the sheets… 

He rolled over again, suddenly re-energized, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He stood up with a long stretch and a bellowy yawn, and padded toward the shower. 

There, facing his reflection in the slightly warped glass of the mirror above the wash basin, the rest of Mathias’ note suddenly made sense. 

He was covered head to hip in faint, shimmery violet streaks: a perfect map of every place Mathias had touched him. 

“What in _tides…?!”_

Dinner conversation was going to be lively.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Contrary to many rumors one might hear wandering through the streets of Stormwind, and contrary to what he occasionally assured himself, Mathias Shaw was not a cold blooded, murderous sociopath._
> 
> A day in the life of a Spymaster.

Mathias had recently discovered it was difficult to get up on the wrong side of the bed after waking up in the bulky arms of a Kul’Tiran sailor. But he suspected this had at least _something_ to do with the fact that it was difficult to get up on _any_ side of the bed. He’d started to treat his morning escapes like training for a stealth operation, baiting Flynn to entangle and entrap him in as many ways as he could devise just to see if he could still slip away unnoticed when dawn came. 

To be fair, it would have been a more thrilling game if Flynn were a lighter sleeper. As it was, the stakes really couldn’t have been lower. 

Nevertheless, when he’d opened his eyes and discovered he’d turned his lover into a rendorei tracing powder runestone, he’d choked so hard on a laugh he’d almost managed to lose. 

Almost. The captain really did sleep like the dead. It was a miracle Alleria had managed to wake him. Mathias wondered if maybe he’d felt the presence of the Void... 

He shrugged away the idea and the remnants of Flynn’s embrace, and returned to his desk to compose messages to Genn and Shandris. He wasn’t under any illusion that the worgen _or_ the kaldorei would be lining up volunteers for a mission into Thros, but he’d promised Alleria he’d do what he could, and he was a man of his word. Plus, he wagered that, for his correspondents, any news of Sylvanas had to be better than none. 

The message to Genn began easily enough:

_Your Majesty; You might presume I’m writing to you directly, instead of proceeding through the High King, in a transparent attempt at flattery. Don’t presume. I’m writing directly to you because it’s efficient. Allow me to shadowstep the several paragraphs of ego-stroking ritual that would normally preface a message like this, and proceed to the part where I dangle several enticing words before your ravenous, royal jaws: Sylvanas. Banshee. Gol Inath..._

Those weren’t the _exact_ words, but the message wasn’t far off. Mathias was an assassin, not a diplomat, though he was more than capable of playing that fiddle if the situation called for it. 

Genn Greymane, however, never called for it. Mathias found the Gilnean’s social graces—or lack thereof—refreshingly straightforward. He was a King who wanted what he wanted; stubborn, but uncomplicated. 

The Wrynns were another matter entirely…

Varian had been, in addition to Mathias’ King, one of the closest things he'd ever had to a friend. He’d been stubborn and monstrously unpleasant in his own right, but that pigheadedness had been tempered by an immense warmth, and a willingness—at least when gently guided— to consider every angle of a situation. Mathias had done his best to give him every angle of every situation to consider. In the end, though— 

Mathias put down his quill and pressed his fingers over his eye sockets until fractals spun in the dark. He knew better than to let his mind wander back to the Broken Shore before he’d had a cup of coffee. Or several. Preferably several shots of whiskey as well. 

Ideally, he’d never think about it again. But when was anything ever ideal… 

He snatched up the quill again and finished the message, then shoved it aside and composed a very different note to Shandris. This time he’d played the fiddle, choosing each word carefully, and writing in Darnassian instead of Common. Maybe it _was_ diplomacy after all, but Mathias preferred to think of his craft like bird calls. The trick was to master the song that the other party sang, and sing it impeccably back. 

This particular song took nearly thirty minutes to perfect, and as he waited for the ink to dry he tried not to consider how little a kaldorei would appreciate the extra time he’d invested. 

He rolled up the letters and sealed them, then went to wash up. When he returned, Flynn was _still_ asleep, bless him. The uninked skin of his back was a swirl of blue sparkles mixed with faint stripes of pink where Mathias had dragged his nails. Maybe he’d been a bit overzealous. Maybe he nearly succumbed to the urge to crawl back into bed and trace them all again. 

Instead he went back to the desk, rifled through the top drawer for a spare sheet of parchment and tore off a corner. He scribbled one last bird call. Shorter. Sweeter. Too sweet, maybe. He wasn’t sure. Maybe the whole notion was a mistake. 

He resolved not to overthink it and left the note in the sheets, departing to find an envoy in the portal hall who could make haste to Old Town. He knew that if he got the letters to Renzik, the goblin would find a way to forward them to their ultimate destinations in short order. 

On the way back through the market he stopped at a jeweller’s stall. It was an earthy, mystic sort of affair, more inclined toward crack-your-own geodes and seashells on string than anything measurable in facets or carets. 

The owner of the stall was a spindly older fellow, bald on top with a fringe of salt & pepper hair that preferred to stray sideways rather than downward. He sat at a bench a small ways back from his wares, squinting through a pair of spectacles as he threaded an assortment of sea glass beads and a tiny fluted conch shell onto a leather cord. 

Mathias didn’t claim to know much about shells, but he knew Flynn kept a similar specimen strung around his neck. It struck him as something the captain had probably fashioned himself rather than purchased from a vendor, and there was about a fifty-fifty probability that it was either deeply personal or entirely meaningless. Mathias hadn’t quite figured out how to ask. 

He pretended to browse until it lured the jeweler away from his workbench to greet him. 

“Something I can help you with?” he asked, tilting his head kindly enough. “You don’t strike me as the, er… _ornamental_ sort. Shoppin’ for someone else, maybe? I’ve got a handsome set of rings back here: a matching pair—sterling silver, inlaid with fossilized nautilus—”

“I—” Mathias could recall several blows to the back of the head that had rendered him less gobsmacked than the notion of purchasing a matching set of silver rings. 

He cleared his throat and recentered himself before an avalanche of intrusive thoughts could plow right through his cover. 

“Actually, I was told you might know a thing or two about Mother of Pearl.” The words slipped off his lips with an effortless and nondescript Kul’Tiran clip that only came with careful practice. 

He’d tried out the accent on Flynn during the voyage back to Kul’Tiras, and the captain had nearly spat coffee upon him across the galley table. 

_“That bad?” he’d asked._

_“No, the opposite,” Flynn had wheezed, “Just, breaks my head a bit. You sound like Admiralty. Maybe don’t talk like that between the sheets, eh?”_

_“You’re the one that talks between the sheets.”_

Flynn had spent the rest of the voyage assaulting him with the most outlandish bastardizations of a mainlander drawl he could muster, which he supposed was only fair.

The jeweller eyed Mathias skeptically, though he doubted it had anything to do with his accent. 

“About Mum, eh?” he said, lifting a brow. “Aye, I might. Depends who’s askin’.” 

“Name’s Caldwell. Kellan Caldwell.” 

The shopkeep tilted his head the other way and pulled his spectacles up and down the bridge of his nose, as if it actually helped to see his customer from a different angle. Mathias was careful to hold his gaze, unblinking. 

“You’ve come to the right place, Mr. Caldwell,” he said, finally. “Let me fetch something from the back. I think it’ll be to your liking.” 

He disappeared into his tent behind a clattering curtain of broken shell shards, and Mathias waited, right hand flirting with the hilt of his dagger, just in case the man came back with something he didn’t like at all. 

Despite his best efforts, he found his thoughts wandering back to rings. It wasn’t even that it was a _bad_ notion, exactly, so much as he couldn’t seem to get his damned mind wrapped around it for even a moment without losing the rest of his wits. It was a ridiculous concept. He could easily be dead by day’s end, and Flynn… well, Flynn had the sea in his veins. 

Somehow that didn’t stop Mathias from imagining what a ring would look like on his hand: the way it would peek above the ragged edges of his fingerless gloves, glinting like a secret, or a warning. Or maybe he’d keep it strung around his neck with his seashell, safe from the elements, and close to his heart. Maybe he’d let Mathias brush aside his hair and string it there himself…

Chestnut hair turned raven black, and a taunting laugh echoed through his head.

_“Didn’t take you for the sentiment and souvenirs type, Mat.”_

_Edwin blinked at the tiny skeleton key on the cord Mathias had slipped around his neck, as if not entirely sure what to do with it, though Mathias was certain he knew exactly what it was, both literally and metaphorically._

_“If you don’t want it, then just give it back…”_

_“Didn’t say that, did I? You’re such a twitchy little magpie…”_

With a wink he’d tucked the key into the folds of the red kerchief he wore around his neck, and Mathias had never glimpsed it again. Sometimes he wondered if Edwin had still been wearing it when he’d died. Nearly fifteen years had passed, and he still wasn’t sure he wanted to know. 

_Light._ His fingers clenched around the hilt of his dagger, desperate to stab something. 

The shopkeeper picked that moment to return, almost as if he were volunteering. 

He placed a sealed parchment on top of the display case followed by a small green velvet pouch, watching wordlessly as Mathias took the parchment first, and broke the wax with a pocket knife. 

It was a list of various azerite armaments and their prices, followed by a time, a latitude and longitude, and a description of some rough landmarks. All were written in a popular Freehold cipher Mathias had cracked early on in the war. The pirates kept trying to update it to protect their transactions, but precious few pirates were well schooled in linguistics _or_ mathematics, and that ultimately kept their codes fairly elementary. Not to mention pirates so rarely _agreed_ on anything that there were at least ten variants, and a comparison of their commonalities made it easy for Mathias to deduce not only how the code worked, but how it was likely to change over time. 

The coordinates were somewhere alongside the eastern coast of Tiragarde, not as far south as Castaway Point, but beyond the old Horde foothold— which meant far beyond the eyes of incoming harbor traffic. If he took a bird, he could get down there early enough to scope out the area well ahead of the specified mid-afternoon meeting time... 

He folded the parchment and slipped it into the inner breast pocket of his cloak, then reached for the pouch, cradling it gingerly in one palm while hooking his gloved fingers inside to carefully withdraw its contents. 

It was a pearl—or at least that’s what it appeared to be at first glance: spherical and smooth and luminescent. Except it was a bit _too_ luminescent, and a tad too large to have come from any reasonable oyster. And it seemed to hum, ever so faintly, as if its perfect surface belied chaos untamed just beneath.

 _Mother of Pearl:_ the latest form of refined, weaponized Azerite on the black-market, and Mathias’ current quarry. 

“She’s a beaut, that one…” the shopkeeper remarked, idly, still watching Mathias with a certain level of expectation. 

Mathias uttered a noncommittal sound somewhere between a hum and a huff.

“She’ll do,” he said, and slipped the azerite back into its pouch, then into his side pocket— one that hung farther away from his body, and _much_ farther from his vital organs. Not that it would ultimately matter if something were to go wrong. 

From the same pocket he withdrew five gold coins, and slid them across the display case—for the intelligence, not the wares. 

“Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Caldwell,” said the jeweller as he scooped up his payment. 

“Likewise,” said Mathias with a dip of the chin. He turned to vanish back into the mid-day market crowds. 

“Come back if you change your mind about those rings, eh?” The shopkeeper called after him, as if Mathias had just bought some sparkly geode for his mantlepiece and not an explosive capable of leveling the Snug Harbor Inn. 

He sighed heavily as he made his way to the griffin roost. 

Galeheart was waiting for him when he entered, eying him down with such intense expectation that Mathias immediately felt guilt swoop in his stomach.

“Hello, lovely,” he said gently as he approached. “I’m sorry it’s been a few days…” He reached out to hold her feathered face in his hands, and she shifted restlessly, uttering a long, low warble of complaints. “I know, I’m the worst. What was Taelia thinking?” 

Taelia Fordragon had departed for Stormwind almost immediately after Flynn and Mathias had arrived back in Boralus. Officially, she was an envoy, charged with representing Kul’Tiran interests on the mainland. But Mathias was well aware that her true reasons for trading ports were about as off the books as his own. 

Despite being well versed in subtlety and implication— or perhaps _because_ of that—he couldn’t help but find the whole thing massively awkward. He’d struggled to find words as they’d stood on the docks and bid her a safe journey. _I hope Anduin manages to tell you about your father soon_ wasn’t exactly an appropriate send-off. 

For better or worse, though, Flynn _never_ struggled for words. 

_“Who’d’ve thought I’d be wife-swapping with the High King of the Alliance, eh?”_

_“FLYNN!” Taelia scolded, as Mathias stared at him, horrified._

_Flynn just laughed and laughed as he crushed Taelia to his chest in a hug._

_“I’ll miss you, Tae,” he’d said._

_“Bollocks, you goldfish,” she accused, squinting at him. “I give you ten minutes before you’ve forgotten all about me!”_

_“On second thought, you’re probably right. Better jot your name on the back of my hand. Have you got a quill?”_

_Taelia snorted and punched Flynn’s shoulder, fondly, then expertly removed herself from his arms._

_“Master Shaw…” she said, turning. “I have a request…”_

_“It’s … Mathias…” he’d replied, surprising himself with his own words. “... to you, at least…”_

_“Mathias, then.” Taelia smiled at him with the same magnanimous warmth as her father. It made him vaguely sick. “I’ve left my gryphon, Galeheart, in the harbor roost. I imagine I’ll be in Stormwind for some time, and I’d hate to see her cooped up in the city. Nor could I conceivably leave her at the mercy of this rapscallion beside us…”_

_“Hey now!” Flynn said, frowning, “Who’d be at the mercy of who here?! Last outing, that bird carried me ten leagues by the seat of my pants! Reckon I have talon scars on my arse.”_

_“You don’t,” Mathias disagreed, calmly. “And I see your point,” he told Taelia. Her grin gained a wicked glint._

_“She’s a good girl— a strong flyer, and calm in chaos, be it weather or war. I know you’re not just here on holiday, Mathias. I hope she’ll serve you well …”_

_“I’ll take excellent care of her,” Mathias promised, taken aback by her trust, and her generosity._

_“I don’t doubt it,” Taelia had replied, slinging her bags over her shoulder and reaching out to pat Flynn one last time on the arm. “And_ _you_ _—take good care of him, yeah? That’s no Dampwick pickpocket you’ve brought home, this time.” _

Taelia’s words had left Flynn blushing and rubbing at the back of his neck, and warmth knotted in Mathias’ chest at the recollection.

Truth be told he hadn’t been giving Galeheart nearly the amount of attention she deserved. Most of his work had kept him close to the Kul’Tiran capital, and on the few occasions he’d needed a bird, he’d still hesitated to call upon her. She was an absolutely pristine creature, with plumage that almost blinded in the sun, and a handsome deep green and copper bridle that screamed with the pride of Kul’Tiras: a fitting mount for the daughter of a paladin… 

Not so fitting for a spymaster whose work—and life—depended very much on _not screaming._ He usually opted for smaller gryphons. Unremarkable. Dappled. Grey. Easy to camouflage. 

Today, though, Mathias figured there was no harm in a flashier mount. 

“How would you like to take a trip down to Tiragarde with me?”

Galeheart looked at him like she might rip out his spleen if he so much as considered taking another gryphon. 

Mathias mused that the young Fordragon had excellent taste in allies. 

—— 

True to his estimates, Mathias landed in Tiragarde a bit after one, touching down in the seagrass a safe distance away from the specified coordinates. He tethered Galeheart to a trunk in a patch of half-dead scrub oak and beachroses, and tossed her a chunk of krolusk meat from a pouch in his pocket. 

“Be good,” he said, and she thrashed her head enthusiastically, appearing to nod at him as she scarfed down her treat. “I’ll be back soon.” 

He walked at a casual pace down the beach, taking in the scenery— or what passed for it—as he went. Admittedly, Mathias hadn’t seen much of the interior of the province, but the eastern shore was just an endless strip of silty sand and eroded rock. There seemed to be next to no reason for anybody to visit. 

Unless, of course, you wanted to blow something up without anybody noticing. 

Mathias eventually came across a small irregularity in the coastline, where the beach reached out for a few extra dozen meters into the sea before receding sharply into a murky lagoon framed in crooked, dry evergreens. 

A man sat waiting upon a boulder with his hands clasped, meditating on the breaking waves. Dirty-blonde hair spilled out from beneath his battered tricorne, woven into a braid but so salt-ravaged that every other strand stuck out like straw. 

“Rochlan Harvey?” Mathias asked, as he approached, loud enough to carry over the persistent roar of the surf. 

The man turned and immediately stood when he saw Mathias. 

“You made it,” he said, “I take it you received my little gift, Caldwell?”

“Aye, that I did,” Mathias said, readopting his faux accent. He removed the little velvet pouch from his pocket with one hand, and reached to shake the man’s hand firmly with the other. “Bit nerve wracking to carry it around, if I’m honest.” 

“Ah, but that’s the beauty of Mother of Pearl, isn’t it?! Perfectly stable—right up until it’s not.” Harvey grinned broadly at him. He had at least one golden tooth, and skin that creased like tanned leather. 

“So I’ve heard,” Mathias mused, shaking the little humming sphere from its bag and rolling it around a bit on his palm, appraisingly. “Still having trouble imagining it though.” 

“Time to stop imagining and see for yourself then, yeah?” Harvey asked. 

Mathias met his eyes for a moment, and then dumped the pearl into Harvey’s outstretched hand.

“You said you were, what, an architect?” Harvey inquired as he turned away for a moment. He reached into a satchel on the boulder and removed a pair of strange looking contraptions. “Mind me askin’ what you have in mind for these beauties?” 

“Not at all,” Mathias said. The easiest way to get a man talking was to be a good conversationalist. “There’s a project I’m involved with across the Sound. Lots of reconstruction, now that the bloody Alliance has gone and left us all to pick up the pieces…” 

“Isn’t that the truth,” said Harvey. “Bastards.” 

“This particular effort isn’t going the way I’d like. Tried to handle things the diplomatic way…” 

“Of course,” Harvey sympathized, nodding along as he meddled with his equipment. 

“... but when that didn’t work, I figured I had no other choice but to undermine the whole Tides-damned operation…” 

“And _undermine_ you shall,” Harvey announced, turning back to him and holding out what looked to be an absurdly elaborate blunderbuss, with all sorts of bells and whistles and lights. Mathias watched the needle of some inscrutable gauge repeatedly threaten to max out. It felt like watching a gauge of his own blood pressure. The device had to be either goblin or gnomish, and either way it was bad news. It meant the radius of this smuggling ring was an order of magnitude wider than he’d hoped. 

“So much for subtlety, eh?” he asked. “Did you make this?” 

“Me? Oh, Tides no,” Harvey chuckled. “I’m just a simple businessman. Gotta hand it to those robots off the western coast, though. Insane, the lot of ‘em. But if they hadn’t figured out the shiny coating on these candies, there’d be no business at all…” 

_Mechagnomes, then._ Mathias kept a carefully straight face. “I thought those freaks had all fallen in with the new Alliance?” 

“Most, but not all,” Harvey shrugged. “From what I gather, there’s at least a handful of ‘em who can’t stomach the regime change—if they even have stomachs at all. Tides, what do I know…” 

_Enough,_ thought Mathias, pleased with how easy it seemed to be to pull information from the man. He took the weapon from Harvey’s hands and inspected it carefully, cataloguing each blinking light and wire and knob so he could tell Steelspark about it later. If he were lucky, he’d be able to hand her the actual weapon, but Mathias never counted on being lucky. 

“So… it’s a gun…” Mathias commented, perfectly content to keep playing the fool to see what else he could get from the man. 

“Aye, not just any gun, though. See, these pearls don’t care about the heat—and good thing too, or they’d explode right in the barrel.”

“But you have to break down the coating somehow, yeah?” Mathias interjected. “Otherwise I might as well go stuff a few marbles into a blow gun…” 

“Exactly. And that’s what makes this device so bloody brilliant,” Harvey enthused. “See these conduits here?” He pointed at a series of tubes that twisted through the back of the barrel. “They release an agent that dissolves that pearly coating like a rogue wave devours a sandcastle. But it takes a second. So what you do is, you turn this here dial…” He pointed at a knob on the side of the gun; Mathias noticed it started at 50m and worked its way up to 800m. Harvey twisted it about a quarter of the way. “The higher you set it, the faster the gun will launch the projectile, so the further it’ll travel before the coating disappears… and then…”

“Kaboom,” Mathias said, flatly. 

“To say the least,” Harvey agreed. 

He took the gun back from Mathias and, in a single smooth motion, aimed it out across the water and fired it— 

— directly at a seagull resting on the water. 

Mathias barely had time to grit his teeth in fury before an explosion even larger than he could have anticipated rocked him backward with a distinct azerite _ring_ , obliterating the poor gull and anything else that might have been within a five meter radius, and sending a water spout swirling at least twenty meters into the air. It might have been visible from Boralus. 

“Tides…” he whispered, willing himself not to think about the bird, or about the countless other even more horrific casualties such a volatile explosive could produce. There wasn’t any sense thinking about it, because he wasn’t going to let it happen. It was his job to ensure these things never happened.

“ _High_ tides, you could say!” Harvey cackled, as an unsettling rain of charred seaweed and chum rained back down upon them from the sky. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

“It’ll certainly get the job done,” Mathias allowed, putting his two decades worth of carefully honed stoicism to its fullest use. “Still not very keen on the method of delivery, though. I can’t just go waltzing into a construction site waving that thing around, can I?” He nodded at the gun, which was steaming slightly in Harvey’s hands. “Are there any other options?” 

“Oh sure, sure,” Harvey said, “I just always use this one for demos. Makes things dramatic. Really, the key is in the dissolving agent. So long as you’ve got that, you can go ahead and get creative. You just need to make sure you’re well away from your creation when the time’s up…” 

“Right…” Mathias picked a chunk of fish off his vest. “What _is_ the dissolving agent, anyway, if you don’t mind me asking? Is it something I can make myself?”

“You’ll laugh if I tell you,” Harvey said, jovially, apparently not noticing that Mathias wasn’t the laughing sort. 

“Try me,” he said. 

“It’s _wine,_ mate,” Harvey said in a surreptitious whisper. 

“Wine…” Mathias repeated, blinking. 

“Wine!” Harvey confirmed, then burst out laughing without waiting to see if Mathias even cracked a smile. “Or at least, it _used_ to be wine. See, turns out when those bloody bourgeois elves blew themselves to the bottom of the ocean ten thousand years ago, all their jugs of wine sank with them. And seeing as sea serpents don’t drink anything but brine, the wine just sat there. And _sat_ there. Until it turned into one Tidemother’s _piss_ of an acid. _Completely_ undrinkable, but turns out it’s perfect for tearing pearls to shreds.”

“Who’d’ve thought,” Mathias mused, laughing to fulfill the man’s expectations, even as a new realization dawned on him. 

These azerite explosives weren’t just pearl- _like._ They were _literally_ _pearls,_ probably seeded and harvested en masse somewhere in the depths of Nazjatar, right beside the wine.

 _Light,_ it should have been obvious. He must have been in denial, thinking that this plot was limited to a few remaining Ashvane loyalists. 

Maybe he’d been hoping he’d be able to eliminate the whole operation himself within a few weeks, so he could _actually_ take a vacation… 

But no, apparently there were gnomes, and possibly naga? And the only foreseeable vacation in Mathias’ future was a frigid, foul-smelling foray into Chitterspine Cavern. His bones ached at the thought. 

“That’d explain the price for one of these,” Mathias said aloud. 

“Indeed,” said Harvey. “Limited commodity— at least until those gnomes figure out a way to synthesize the stuff. Only a matter of time before that happens.” 

That wasn’t going to happen.

Satisfied that he’d gotten about all the information he needed—or could tolerate—from this particular bottom-dweller, Mathias let the conversation enter the negotiation phase. He picked up six _Mother of Pearl_ and a well stoppered flask of ancient naga wine for close to a thousand gold. For an extra two hundred, Harvey offered him the gun as well, though Mathias made a carefully begrudging show of accepting the deal. He wasn’t exactly _sad_ to unload himself of the weight of that coin, but he hoped he could bring down the ring before Harvey had the opportunity to reinvest the gold in any meaningful way. 

“Awfully precious, isn’t it, though? For the average bloke?” Mathias pressed him, watching Harvey squirrel the bags of gold away in his longcoat. “Can’t imagine the market’s all that hungry for this sort of thing…”

“You’d be surprised,” Harvey replied. “Case in point, I’ve got some business down near Castaway Point right after I wrap up with you.”

Mathias lifted an eyebrow. 

“Does enough coin wash ashore with the rabble down there to even pay for _one_ of these?”

“Not usually, no,” Harvey replied. “But the war shook up a lot of purses and pockets— and pirates. A couple of the Irontide decided to lay low there until Boralus turned its back again.”

“The _Irontide,”_ Mathias’ jaw was beginning to hurt with the amount of effort it took to keep his expression neutral, and his lungs burned with the desire to sigh, or scream. “I thought that whole band was wiped out along with their captain.” 

“Oh, there’s always one or two stragglers who manage to miss every massacre. They either turn around and sign with some other crew, or they raise new sails and look for revenge.” 

“But the Alliance is long gone at this point. What revenge could they—”

— His heart stopped along with the words in his throat as Harvey laughed. 

_“_ The Irontide aren’t interested in a bunch of faceless Alliance mooks, mate. That Dampwick runt, Fairwind, must’ve sold half of Freehold to the Lions. And if that weren’t bad enough, _now_ the word is he’s spread the legs of one of their top brass so he can hide between them like the tail of some cowardly bitch.”

“That’s quite the rumor,” Mathias remarked, perfectly level, even as his heart beat in his throat quick enough to make his head spin. Or maybe it was spinning because he was replaying every single moment from the last several months, searching for _anything_ or _anyone_ that could have started those whispers… 

“Rumor or not, I reckon plenty of folk are ready to pay a pretty penny to blow that bloke’s head clean off. And that’s what I’m here for!” Harvey turned to look back across the sea, tossing a spare pearl in the air and catching it idly, as if looking for another bird to kill. “Pity these pearls are so effective, though. If it were me, I’d want to make him beg for his life for a spell...” 

That wasn’t going to happen.

Contrary to many other rumors one might hear wandering through the streets of Stormwind, and contrary to what he occasionally assured _himself_ , Mathias Shaw was not a cold blooded, murderous sociopath. He wasn’t the sort to point a grenade launcher at a gull, nor to delight in the act of taking a life. He killed when it was necessary, and did so by meticulously turning off the part of his mind that registered his marks as living things. He was, admittedly, frightfully good at it, but it was nevertheless a practiced skill, not a personality trait. 

Usually, this _turning off_ was a process, like sharpening a knife or donning armor, and Mathias went into any given scenario with a predetermined notion of whether the souls he spoke to were alive or already dead. 

Every so often, though, Mathias turned off in the middle. 

Of course he knew Flynn was a wanted man. One didn’t _walk away_ from piracy any more than one _retired_ from being a spy. There were probably more people on both sides of Kul’Tiran law who wanted Flynn dead than had ever personally targeted Mathias, owing at least in part to the fact that Flynn seemed like such an easy target. He was loud, and bold, and irreverent, and his laugh was a lure for every crosshair within five leagues. Of course Mathias knew… 

But it was different, somehow, to hear it out loud—to stand in front of the man who might imminently sell the murder weapon, and listen to his threats. Mathias heard threats every day, against his life, his home, his King. But this… this was— _Flynn_ was—different. 

When Harvey turned back to him, his soul had already crossed over.

“Well, I’d say we’re about done here, wouldn’t you?” he asked. 

“I would,” Mathias replied, easily. 

The man had the gall to pat his shoulder like an old friend, so of course Mathias returned the gesture, smiling with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. It wasn’t clear whether Harvey noticed or not. Mathias no longer registered his face.

“Enjoy the rest of your day, Caldwell,” he said, turning to depart. 

“You as well,” Mathias said. 

Then he shoved a dagger into his kidney and held the other to his throat. 

“Word of advice for your next life,” he hissed into Harvey’s ear as the man wheezed and sputtered in his grasp. He abandoned all pretense and spoke plainly in his own accent. “If you’re going to spread rumors about tails between legs, make sure you’re not _talking to the legs.”_

Mathias watched realization creep onto the man’s face at roughly the same rate that the blood was leaving it. Harvey clenched his teeth and glared at him out of the corner of his eye, sweat beading on his brow. 

“Some … for you, then, Legs…” he whispered through laborious breaths. “If you’re going… to kill a man, make sure … he hasn’t… brought … friends.” 

And… _yeah,_ Mathias thought, wearily, as he began to notice movement on the tree line in his peripheral vision. That checked out. He was a reckless idiot for not considering that possibility before eviscerating this guy in a petty fit. 

Fortunately, Harvey was an even _bigger_ idiot for tipping him off. 

“Your feedback is a gift,” Mathias said, then split Harvey’s throat like a gaping fish and spun just in time to catch a pair of incoming cutlass strikes with Harvey’s gut instead of his own. 

He wrenched his blade from the body and dropped low, whirling around his new assailants as they floundered momentarily with the unexpectedly bloody mess of their leader. He sliced one of them in the calf as he went, not hard enough to floor him but well enough to at least slow him. The man slashed out at him in retribution but didn’t manage to catch anything but Mathias’ cloak. 

“Treacherous, ankle-biting _dog!”_ he growled as they rounded on him. “We had a deal!” 

“We _really_ didn’t,” Mathias spat, smearing blood from his brow and dodging a broad sweep of a sword. There were three of them total, two men and a woman, each armed with a cutlass. The slimmer of the men wielded a dagger in his off hand. His grip on it suggested he was an amateur. The woman had a buckler that barely shielded her elbow, but compensated for it in sheer stature— and her frenzied willingness to keep lunging at him. It occurred to Mathias that she’d probably been Harvey’s lover.

He continued to assess his options, all the while ducking and weaving through various blows and bellows of “ _Coward!”_ and _“Bastard!”_ He wagered he could _probably_ take all three fairly, but to be honest those were worse odds than he cared to play at the moment, particularly in the wake of what a _Lightforsakenly_ _stupid_ choice this had been to begin with. He could feint and run, and make it back into the air on Galeheart before they caught up with him. But that would leave three angry mouths filled with far more damaging information than the one he’d already silenced. Mathias would never get to the bottom of this operation if word got out that there was _a ruddy mainlander_ running amok. 

That left a third option: take all three of them _unfairly._

They’d called him an ankle-biting dog without considering that there were far more deadly creatures that could strike below the knee… 

Instead of dodging the smaller man’s next attack, he spun and caught the cutlass in the crossguard of his dagger, wrenching the man’s arm down hard enough to dislocate his shoulder. In the same moment, he traded his second dagger for a punch knife hidden in a mechanism on his right gauntlet. It was a tiny blade, barely longer than two inches, quite incapable of killing much of anything— 

— except for the part where it was laced with enough Krasarang Murkscale venom to down an adult tauren. 

The man lashed out with his dagger, but Mathias managed to twist just enough to avoid all but a shallow cut to the bicep. He reciprocated by slashing his knife across the back of the man’s knuckles, opening his glove and the skin beneath it, and causing the man to reflexively let go of his weapon. Mathias promptly kicked it aside and whirled away before the woman could descend upon him. He stepped behind her and drove his knife into the tiny gap between her bracers and the start of her buckler, piercing her arm. 

She whipped her cutlass toward him with enough force to make a sound in the air. Unfortunately for her, air was all she struck, because Mathias was already several feet away again. 

_“What in tides?!”_ she cried, somewhere between baffled and irritated. “Fetch me a flyswatter, Darren. This bloke fights like a fuckin’ Stormsong bumble bee.”

“Be glad,” said the other man, who was presumably Darren. Not that it mattered. “After those bees do their stinging they _die.”_

To his credit, Darren proved harder to land a hit on than the other two. He had superior sword skills, and seemed more than happy to rely on his bare fist in lieu of a shield or an offhand. Mathias danced with him for several beats, dodging in and out of his range to get a feel for his rhythm, like a gull skipping in and out of the surf, all the while wary of his other two opponents circling and sizing him up again. The hair on his arms stood straight in anticipation and the breeze off the water kissed cold across the sweat on his neck. 

The woman attacked again and he chose the same moment to lunge at Darren, forcing him to swing his sword early to avoid striking his ally. Mathias cut inside the path of the blade and took a fist to the chest instead. That was intentional, but he didn’t quite expect it to wind him _quite_ so thoroughly as he flew backward and landed with a _thump_ in the sand. 

_Ugh, Kul’Tirans and their fists,_ he thought, vaguely, still tracking the crescendoing sound of Darren laughing as he approached. Mathias wheezed and shook his head clear, feeling a dull ache flare up in his lower back and stab into his hip. He was getting too old for these self-sacrificing tricks… 

For the moment, though, he was exactly where he wanted to be. For some definition of _want_ , at least… 

The wiry man tried to pounce him and Mathias tossed up his cloak and then tucked his knees to his chest. He kicked upward with both feet and struck the man square in the belly, launching him somersaulting over his head somewhere unimportant. 

Darren loomed in his wake like an executioner, sword raised in both hands to plunge into Mathias’ belly. It was rather overdramatic, he thought, right before rolling hard to one side, careful to take his cloak with him to avoid getting pinned. 

The blade plowed into the sand beside him and buried itself a good several inches. As Darren struggled to pull it free again Mathias whipped a handful of sand into his face and scrambled to his feet, taking the opportunity to jab his little blade into the meat of the man’s thigh. 

_Gotcha._

Darren roared, more in frustration, Mathias supposed, than in actual pain. 

“Fight fair, you miserable milkpup!” He demanded, whirling around. 

“Says a pirate selling _weaponized jewelry,”_ Mathias all but cackled, his words cresting atop a heavy breath. He sounded a bit manic to his own ears, but it was fine. This was all going to be fine, momentarily. 

He took the woman for another tango, content to follow her lead as he observed the sweat beginning to bead upon her brow, the glaze that overtook her eyes, the blue tint that washed into her lips and fingers. Darren joined in as well, but between the wounds in his legs and the gradually unraveling coordination of their attacks, Mathias had very little trouble taking on both of them at once. 

“Darren… Reysa…” the smaller man groaned, then. Somewhere to the side, Mathias spotted him on all fours in the sand, trembling. “Reckon he’s poisoned us…” he gasped. “... that bloody little blade of his…” 

_“Snake!”_ Darren spat, just as Reysa collapsed at Mathias’ feet. 

_Ah, so you’ve finally guessed correctly._

Mathias delicately stepped around the convulsing woman and turned, only to find Darren doing something altogether unexpected. 

The man was _running._

He’d taken off at quite a clip despite his bloody, wobbly legs. Perhaps he thought he could make it back to a bird, and the bird would take him to a healer… 

Unfortunately for Darren, the upper ranks of SI:7 had taken to using Murkscale venom after the campaign in Pandaria in part because it was a particularly swift poison— _and_ because, a handful of monks aside, the only healer who actually knew the antidote was King Anduin himself. 

Nevermind that the more the man exerted himself, the more swiftly the poison would reach his heart. 

Mathias tucked the push dagger back into its compartment and glanced at the gnomish stopwatch on the underside of his wrist. He had half a mind to start a timer. He wagered the man had… oh… a minute and forty-five seconds at most, depending on body mass index. Mathias watched dispassionately as he continued to stumble down the beach—

—until an arrow zipped out of the treeline and pierced him cleanly through the throat, downing him in an instant. 

Mathias threw himself back on his belly in the sand, peeking carefully over Reysa’s unresponsive body to scan the treeline. 

“What _now?!”_ he growled to himself. 

“Were you just planning to let that one go, Spymaster _?”_ a familiar voice echoed across the beach just as Mathias finally spotted a pair of glowing eyes watching him from the shadows of a juniper thicket. “That’s sloppier than I’d expect, from you.” 

“He was _seconds_ from dropping!” He growled, pushing himself back to his knees, then hauling himself to his feet. The tail end of his adrenaline kick churned in his gut like fire. Literally _all_ of his joints ached. “Are you trying to blow my cover?” 

Shandris Feathermoon emerged from the trees, pulling a stray cluster of juniper berries from her indigo hair and flicking them aside as she met Mathias halfway to the waterline. 

“Looked like you had already blown it yourself.” 

Mathias tore a cloth from an inner pocket of his cloak and began to wipe the blood off his blades. 

“How did you even find me?” 

The Sentinel’s eyes flickered briefly skyward, and when Mathias followed her gaze he immediately spotted the pair of warden owls circling overhead. That lessened the mystery but didn’t entirely solve it. However, Shandris Feathermoon was, Wardens and Windrunners notwithstanding, one of the finest trackers he’d ever encountered. He decided it wasn’t worth pressing the issue. 

“So is this the level of rabble the King has you rounding up these days?” Shandris asked, skeptically, glancing around at the mess he’d left. “The boy has questionable priorities, as usual.” 

“The King’s priorities are the same as mine,” Mathias replied, resheathing his daggers and wiping his hands off as best he could before stuffing the cloth back in his cloak. “And the same as yours, in the end. I’ve sparred enough for one day. You got my message. And you decided it was worth answering in person. What do you have for me?” 

“Who says I _have_ anything for you?” Shandris said. “Maybe I just wanted to hear you repeat the request to my face without flinching.”

Mathias stared at her flatly. 

“Am I _known_ for flinching, Feathermoon?” he asked. “There’s fair reason to believe Sylvanas could be targeting Gol Inath.” 

“And what reason might that be?” Shandris pressed him. “The word of another Windrunner?” 

Mathias sighed. 

“She has operatives in the field—”

“More void-addled abominations—”

“One of them is a paladin—”

“Lately the Light is no more rational than its opposite—”

“At present, Alleria Windrunner has been trying harder to track down her sister than any other creature on Azeroth. You owe her a least a _little_ respect,” Mathias insisted, despite being all too aware that this was the wrong approach to take with Shandris. But quadruple homicide wasn’t exactly an apperetif for good diplomacy, and when stupid decisions rained, they tended to pour.

“I owe her _nothing!”_ Shandris replied, predictably. “One Windrunner is no different than another. Queldorei, Sindorei, Rendorei? Forsaken? It doesn’t _matter_.” 

“And whose word _would_ matter?!” he asked. “The other _dorei_ are apparently all twisted and inferior. The dwarves and the gnomes? Too possessed with their tunnels and technology. If Baine Bloodhoof had sent a tip from his own druids, you’d declare it a Horde plot. If I went into Gol Inath _myself_ , and brought you back firsthand intelligence you’d call it _questionable.”_

 _“You_ and your _questionable intelligence_ sent the Alliance forces to Silithus to begin with! Teldrassil _burned_ because of _you.”_

Her voice had barely risen above the roll of the waves behind them, but it didn’t matter. Her words tore through Mathias like a glaive and left him standing stunned in its wake, a man cleaved in half so cleanly it hadn’t even toppled him. He half expected to look at his torso and see blood flowing down his legs... 

They’d worked side-by-side for the entire Fourth War, and Shandris hadn’t ever said a thing, but _Light,_ there it was, wasn’t it? The whole truth of the matter, lying on the sand between them like some beached whale. 

It wasn’t as if the thought had never occurred to him before. It was an ever present notion, skulking in the back of his conscience, King of a hundred thousand sins.

He clenched his hand into a fist at his side, then let it fall loose again. His gloves were still tacky with dried blood. 

“If you think I don’t feel guilty about that, you don’t know me very well,” Mathias told her, quietly. “There hasn’t been a single day since the start of the war that I haven’t gone back through every shred of evidence, every communication from Orgrimmar, every signal and sign, every _moment,_ just searching for _something_ I could have noticed that would have prevented the slaughter of your people. But the truth of the matter is that I was working with all the information I had, and it wasn’t good enough. _I wasn’t good enough._ ”

Shandris watched him in silence as he spoke, expressionless and unblinking, though the lack of outright contempt in her features was encouraging enough that Mathias made up his mind to continue: 

“I’m not the sort of person to place value in grand apologies and promises of vengeance,” Mathias continued. “I’m just trying to prevent the _next_ tragedy, with all the information I have. And it _still_ isn’t good enough.” 

“Help me _make_ it good enough. Shandris,” he implored, carefully. “You don’t like Alleria’s tip? I don’t blame you. It’s odd at best and insane at worst. But there’s still a chance that it’s _true._ And two druids could help us get the story straight _before_ we strike, this time.” 

Shandris’ jaw twitched and her dark eyebrows furrowed as she stared over Mathias’ shoulder out at the sea. She rocked slightly on her heels, something Mathias had seen her do countless times over the years when she was contemplating some troublesome tactical decision. He’d always found it discordant— a curiously childish tick for such an ancient creature. 

“Tyrande would never condone sending even _one_ of our druids into a place like Gol Inath,” she said at long last. “Too many of our people have already met death for her to ask anyone to court it intentionally.”

“I understand,” Mathias said, and he _did_ , perhaps better than she would ever realize. “But I’m not standing on a Tiragarde beach with _Tyrande.”_

Alleria’s voice from the night before echoed faintly in his head: _I didn’t bring this to Jaina. Or Tyrande. Or my husband. Or The King. I’m bringing this to_ _you_ _._ What a miserable game they all played with each other, even as supposed _allies_. It was no wonder Azeroth couldn’t find peace for more than a moment… 

“What do you have for me, Shandris…” he asked again, gently this time. 

She sighed and muttered something in Darnassian that Mathias didn’t quite catch, then folded her arms across her chest, looking back at him with all the intensity of moonfire. Mathias held her gaze, patiently. 

“When the Alliance departed Kul’Tiras at the end of the war, I asked a few of the Sentinels to remain behind at Western Watch, to aid the Thornspeakers in their ongoing quest to cleanse the Crimson Forest. It’s a small group, but there are three druids embedded among them: Kaera Mossthorn, Renthas Owlfeather, and Eunys Meadowlark. All three of them volunteered to remain in Drustvar, and are quite familiar with the territory. 

“They’re also quite accustomed to making decisions for themselves,” Shandris continued. “I won’t order my people into Thros, but if you can convince any of them to assist you, I’ll honor their decisions and defend them to Tyrande, if it comes to that.” 

Mathias frowned. Three druids, each with the luxury of accepting or rejecting his request. If even one of them declined, he knew he’d be unlikely to convince the other two. On the other hand, if even one of them accepted, and he could get something out of Greymane, there was hope yet… 

“Will you brief them on the mission?” he asked. 

“I’ll let them know you’ll be contacting them,” she said, with a note of finality. 

He sighed.

“Fair enough,” he conceded. “Thank you, Shandris.”

“Don’t,” she replied. “Thank _them,_ if they actually agree to this madness.”

“I will,” he told her. “But I’m thanking you too. You answered my message—and came all this way—despite my role in all of this…” 

Shandris fidgeted again for a moment, turning over a sand dollar with the tip of her boot and working her jaw from side-to-side.

“Tyrande isn’t ready to admit it yet, but we’ll never catch Sylvanas, if we don’t at least _try_ to work together,” she said. “And you’re a good man, Mathias. As guilty as they come, but _good_.”

Mathias stared at her, stricken. Somehow, he’d preferred it when she’d simply laid the charred remains of Teldrassil at his feet. 

“Good luck, Spymaster.”

With that, Shandris turned her back and slipped away into the trees, leaving Mathias with an aching head and four corpses to deal with before the high tide. 

He cut the throats of the two who’d died by poison. It would look less conspicuous if the bodies happened to wash ashore somewhere later—and if anybody even cared enough to investigate. Few people had the instincts to look past an obvious stab wound to notice even fouler play. 

With the bloody work complete, he went on to search every pocket and satchel the group possessed, hoping for ledgers, maps, correspondence: _anything_ that might add some flesh to the skeleton of a plot he was slowly piecing together. He’d have to send Steelspark into Mechagon, in all likelihood. And the thought of Nazjatar…

Mathias promptly decided _not_ to think of Nazjatar. 

He found very little else of value beyond what Harvey had already shared with him. They all carried a substantial amount of gold, but that did nothing to assuage the guilt that kept threatening to turn his stomach. Sure, they’d been smugglers and scumbags, but Mathias had met five hundred souls of similar caliber in his life and had managed to keep his daggers clean. He attempted to wrangle with the nature of the madness that had seized him, only to find his mind even less willing to approach it than a cavern full of naga. 

He stood and dusted the sand from his knees and cloak, taking a final glance around at the scene. 

“What a waste…” he muttered, “A damned, bloody waste…” 

He began to head back to Galeheart, then paused with a thought and a frown, and turned in the opposite direction instead. 

He passed Darren’s corpse, plucking the conspicuous kaldorei arrow from his throat and tucking it into his cloak. Then he continued along his hypothetical trajectory until it intersected the treeline, and picked around in the brush until he heard the sound he’d been searching for: 

Three riding parrots were tethered to the trunk of a nearly-naked spruce tree, awaiting the return of their passengers. They chattered feistily and puffed their showy plumage as Mathias crept closer. One of them screeched and swiped at him as he drew his dagger. 

“This probably smells familiar. Sorry about that,” he said, evading a flurry of feathers and talons as he cut their saddles and bridles, then moved on to their tethers. “On the bright side, you’re free now. Full bellies of fish whenever you want. A nest overlooking the Sound. Skies the limit…” 

The birds took a moment to register what had just been offered to them, but parrots weren’t stupid by a long shot. Once they realized they were no longer bound to the tree, they forgot about Mathias entirely and took flight, cackling off into the coastal thermals. 

Beside him, the last of the little flock watched them depart and uttered a considerably less joyful squeak. 

“As for _you…_ ” Mathias said, turning. 

The fourth mount wasn’t a parrot; it was a Boralus gryphon. 

She looked reasonably healthy, though her white plumage was dingy and her bridle well worn. 

She observed him with one eye, keen and round and gold as a newly minted coin. Her tail whipped from side-to-side on high alert, but she didn’t lunge or swipe at him as he crept closer. 

“Creatures like us aren’t made for endless sky and sea…” he said, apologetically. “But how does a nice bath and a roost back at the harbor sound?” 

_Ever_ so slowly, he reached for the rope around the creature’s neck and cut it, then sheathed the blade and let his hands sink into the dusty feathers at her shoulders, fingering the tattered leather of her reins. 

She continued to regard him, stubborn and skeptical. 

“There might even be dinner waiting for us…?” Mathias said, lifting a brow. 

At that, the bird’s tone seemed to shift entirely. She bowed and pushed the top of her head straight into Mathias chest, warbling and nuzzling him like a particularly manipulative cat.

“That’s what I thought,” Mathias said, smiling. 

He slipped into the saddle and was preparing to guide his new friend back to where he’d tied Galeheart, when his knee nudged something, and he glanced down to discover a satchel hanging from the bird’s left side. 

A rolled piece of parchment peeked out from under the flap. Mathias tried not to hold his breath as he withdrew it. The gryphon hissed and shook her head as he opened it and lay it out upon her neck. 

“Just a moment,” he assured her, peering down at the strange design that greeted him. 

At first glance, it looked as if a squid had simply burst upon the parchment, ruining it with a messy dark blob… 

…a blob that happened to bear an uncanny resemblance to Nazjatar when flipped around. 

Mathias knew a map when he saw one. But what use was an opaque map?

Unless it _wasn’t_ opaque. 

Squinting, he tilted the parchment this way and that, and began to notice faint marks on the otherwise glossy surface of the ink, tiny and intricate, as if they’d been scratched there with a needle. 

A hypothesis formed in his head, and he held the map up to the sky. 

Sure enough, backlit—even if only by what little of the afternoon light filtered through the canopy— the map burst to life, covered in etched landmarks, labels, and captions, all in Naga Darnassian. 

_Light,_ it was a masterpiece. He’d have found the craftsmanship admirable even if this _wasn’t_ the most straightforward piece of intelligence he’d managed to gather all day. 

The world rocked beneath him as the gryphon shifted and snorted, impatient. 

“Yes, yes. We’re leaving,” Mathias promised, rolling up the map and tucking it into his cloak. “But just think, if I _hadn’t_ decided to kill them all, I never would have come looking for you, and we never would have developed this _highly rewarding_ friendship.” 

The gryphon squawked loudly, probably to call him on his bullshit. He patted her shoulder in consolation, then dug his heels into her flanks until she took flight. 

—— 

Galeheart was less than pleased with Mathias’ adultery, but with enough coaxing and krolusk meat, he was able to convince her to follow him back to the city. The flightmaster, meanwhile, was overjoyed when he returned with two birds instead of one.

“This here’s Lady Luckysails!” he announced, as Mathias handed off her reins and unclipped Harvey’s satchel from her saddle, tossing it over his shoulder instead. “Where in the Nether did you find her?” 

“Down in Tiragarde, with a smuggler. I figured she was stolen, so I stole her back…” 

“You figured right! Beautiful bird, this one. Only four years old. We thought we lost her in the war. But I guess you lived up to your name, didn’t you, sweetheart?” He patted the gryphon’s haunch as he carefully removed her saddle. 

“She brought me a bit of luck, today,” Mathias agreed, silently wondering whether Kul’Tirans had rules for what constituted an appropriate name for a bird versus a boat. He considered asking the flightmaster, but refrained. If the rulebook existed, it felt like the sort of thing he’d rather hear from Flynn, maybe two or three drinks in… 

“Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?” The flightmaster continued to coo at his recovered bird, and Mathias found himself unable to suppress a smile as the man gave her a big, smacking kiss on the beak. She didn’t seem to mind overly much, just stomped her feet and shook her head a bit, as if to say: _Baths are nice, but I was promised dinner._

Mathias knew the feeling. Though technically, in his case, he was the one who had done the promising. But he desperately needed to shower before he ventured back into the market. It didn’t seem polite—or hygienic—to show up for supper spattered in blood. 

He tried to leave a tip, but the flightmaster wouldn’t allow it, insisting that the gryphon was worth a lifetime of free flights. Mathias found that a bit extravagant, but eventually decided that the argument was something he could resume the next time he needed a bird. 

He scritched Galeheart under the beak on his way out of the roost, and headed back to his flat. 

Flynn wasn’t there—not that he expected the man to just lurk about when he wasn’t around—and that was probably for the best. It gave Mathias a bit of time to lock away the day’s intelligence in his desk, and lock the day’s drama somewhere deep in the dungeons of his mind. 

Still, he found himself disappointed as he turned on the shower and stepped under the spray. He realized belatedly some part of him had been hoping that Flynn would join him— lather up his hair, maybe, and knead the knots out of his shoulders. Maybe nibble on his ears a bit as he filled them with outlandish gossip from the docks... 

He mercilessly stifled those thoughts before they could kindle themselves into yet another problem he had to solve. He washed his hair with a practiced efficiency, and tended to the cut on his arm which he’d more or less forgotten about by that point. He’d been slashed in that exact same place so many times the scars had all converged into a pale stripe nearly the width of two fingers. He couldn’t feel the sting of the soap. The water swirled with red as it disappeared down the drain. He watched until it turned pink, and then clear, and his mind felt similarly vacant. Then he twisted off the tap and dried himself. 

He wrapped a thin bandage around his arm, mostly to stop the cut from sticking to the linen of the fresh shirt he pulled over his head. He spent altogether too long deciding what amount of armor was appropriate, and then another eternity fussing with his moustache and hair, until he’d frustrated even himself. 

Sighing, he threw on his cloak and left in a blur. 

—— 

The market always made Mathias uneasy, and more so as the sun sank low. He’d spent enough time wandering amidst the stalls and street peddlers during the war that he knew his way around as well or better than a native. But he was all too aware that to truly _know_ something, it had to know _you_ as well. The Boralus harbor market knew him, for better or worse, and Mathias always prepared for the worst. 

Lately, though, he’d slowly been learning how to anticipate the best, as well… 

Somebody fell in behind him just as his nose caught the first hint of roasting meat on the breeze. He turned a corner at a stall selling grains and dried herbs, and the footsteps followed, trailing him at a distance too measured to be coincidence. 

In absolutely any other circumstance, Mathias would have already been reaching for his knives, expecting another assailant to cut him off a few yards ahead, and pin him in the middle of the alleyway. 

But he knew these particular footfalls: their carelessly heavy saunter. The sound set his heart thumping a similarly bold rhythm. He slowed his pace but didn’t entirely stop, wandering along until his pursuer loomed at his shoulder. His warmth all but bled into Mathias’ back through his cloak. 

“Not going to say hello?” he asked, curiously. “How unlike you.” 

Flynn’s surprised laugh was rich and sweet, and caught on the evening air like fire. 

“My job, is it?” he asked. “ _Hello,_ then,” he said, grandiosely. “You know, I still don’t understand how you ever manage to do any sneaking. I reckon I could have your ginger head in my sights from ten leagues off.”

“I wasn’t trying to sneak,” Mathias replied, simply, “And you knew what you were looking for.” 

“I sure did,” Flynn agreed, easily. His hand crept against the small of Mathias’ back, then slipped away again before Mathias could even fully register the sensation. He had been quick to instill in Flynn that he wouldn’t tolerate any sort of public displays of affection, and the captain had rather nobly attempted to comply, though Mathias could tell he struggled with it. It put a warm, restless glow in his chest to know how much Flynn seemed to want to touch him. Nobody had ever been so keen on touching him if not to snap his neck. 

And sometimes—like right at this moment—Mathias honestly couldn’t comprehend why he didn’t just _allow_ it. He imagined just catching the captain’s arm, or tucking himself into the flapping folds of his longcoat as they walked along the docks, and the way Flynn’s bangs would blow about and tickle Mathias’ face when he leaned in to kiss him…

Then he recalled the rumors that had apparently already taken root, and swiftly remembered _exactly_ why he insisted on making himself miserable. 

“Are you starving? I’m _starving,”_ Flynn said, stepping around him in one long stride and catching his eye with a wink, before making off at double speed toward the scent of barbecue.

For such a broad shouldered creature, he didn’t struggle to weave through the stalls, all but waltzing along, looking this way and that, plucking things up and putting them down, almost as if he’d never seen any of it before. Mathias found himself content to linger in his wake, drinking his fill of the captain’s silhouette in the twilight, barely seeing anything else.

Flynn didn’t make it more than fifteen meters before getting distracted by a stall selling handmade toys. The lamplight cast a warm amber glow across the display, and bathed his face as he crouched down to have a better look at all the little wooden wonders. 

“Hey, Mattie, stop lollygagging and come here!” 

“I don’t _lollygag,”_ Mathias said, but drifted toward him nevertheless.

He was ogling a little rig of a dozen wooden beads, each hanging on a thread slightly longer than the one beside it. The first and last beads were carved like the head and tail of a cloud serpent, and those in between were beautifully engraved with Pandaren glyphs and scrollwork. The artistry was breathtaking, and Mathias reached out without thinking to examine one of the beads, only for Flynn to swat him away. 

“No. Watch,” he insisted, reaching for a thin wooden board beside the display. He carefully slid it along the side of all of the beads, gathering them and drawing them toward him at about a 60 degree angle. “Ready?” he asked. 

Mathias nodded, and Flynn removed the board, letting all the beads loose in one smooth motion. 

For a moment, they swung back and forth in unison. But then their frequencies began to shift, until Mathias found himself staring at a marvelous, twisting, hypnotic swirl that looked— 

“... _exactly_ like a cloud serpent,” he whispered, reverently. 

“Right?” Flynn agreed, “Beautiful, aren’t they? Saw a whole _sky_ of them once, on the way back from one of my Azerite runs. Thought I was dreaming…” 

The beads were still swirling, but Mathias’ attention drifted back to Flynn’s face. He was still enamored by the display, chin resting on his hands, grinning ear to ear in the orange light like some kind of unfathomably lovely jack o'lantern. It almost hurt to look at him.

He pictured Flynn scampering through these streets as a child, trying to stop and play with the toys in these stalls, only to be chased off by vendors swinging brooms and spitting curses. Mathias wondered how many times he’d fallen asleep with an empty stomach in these cold alleyways, dreaming of the sea and sails and cloud serpents... 

Mathias’ own childhood had been virtually non-existent, and though he’d been raised a thief, he’d never realized what had been stolen from him. Or maybe he’d always known, but only recently started to fathom he might be able to steal some of it _back._ For himself, and for the man beside him, too. 

“That one is twenty gold, if you’d like him to have it…” said the Pandaren vendor, at the _precise_ moment Mathias contemplated buying Flynn the entire shop. _Light, they always know._ There was a good reason street vendors frequently made such valuable informants. Next to spies, there were few creatures quite so keen about human nature. However, Mathias _vastly_ preferred when they were exposing _other_ people’s secrets, rather than his own. 

“I—”

“Twenty gold!” Flynn exclaimed, before Mathias could fashion a polite response. He rose to his feet again, straightening his coat. “Tides, that’s outrageous! You could carve a nicer one yourself if you wanted to, Mattie…” 

“... I highly doubt that,” he said quietly, tossing an apologetic glance at the scowling vendor. “It’s a lovely piece of work.” 

“Doubt it all you want,” Flynn continued, his attention still tied up in the toys. “But I’ve seen the things you whittle. All those pretty little birds hiding ‘round your flat in Stormwind? Reckon you could retire and start a shop of your own…” 

“It’s… just a hobby…” He hadn’t expected Flynn to notice them, much less guess that he’d carved them himself. “I wouldn’t have the patience for shopkeeping, anyway,” he said, still subtly trying to placate the wounded ego of the Pandaren across from him. 

“Well _that’s_ a lie if I ever heard one,” Flynn chuckled, instantly nullifying his attempts. “You have enough patience to put up with _me_.” 

“You are _far_ from the most insufferable person in this market…” Mathias insisted. “... despite your best efforts.”

“Ah,” Flynn mused, a smile in his voice, “Did you hear that?” He lifted a conspiratorial brow at the Pandaren, “I think he might be a bit sweet on me. What do you think?”

The shopkeeper sighed heavily and rolled her eyes, but Mathias saw the smile curling on the corners of her mouth at the same time he felt the blush all but stinging in his cheeks. 

_Damned irresistible rapscallion,_ he thought. 

“Hah! Now _here’s_ a wicked one,” Flynn laughed, suddenly, pointing at a smaller contraption tucked toward the far corner of the display. 

It was a tinker toy Mathias knew as a _Norgannon’s Cradle_ : another set of beads, though this time only five, and all hanging evenly side-by-side. The first and last were carved to resemble the head and the feet of a pirate. 

Flynn drew the feet back a few inches, then let them drop. 

They hit the rest of the beads with a soft _clack_ , and the pirate’s head went flying off an equal distance in the opposite direction. 

Mathias’ blood ran colder than the harbor in the dead of winter. 

“Bet that’s about what you’re ready to do to me right about now, eh?” Flynn teased. 

_Reckon plenty of folk would pay a pretty penny to blow his head clean off. Pity these pearls are so effective, though. If it were me, I’d want to make him beg for his life for a spell…_

The pirate’s head popped off again and again as the beads continued to swing before his eyes, each one carved of pale birch wood, and shiny with varnish. The rhythm of their collisions _click-clacked_ in the blank abyss of his mind like a timer on a bomb. _Light,_ it would be so damned easy to swap one of those beads for the pearl he’d had in his pocket that morning, and rig the little toy to send Flynn and half the market into the bay… 

_Click clack click clack click clack—_

_“Mattie…”_

He heard Flynn’s voice, vaguely, though it seemed miles away. He was already sinking to the bottom of the harbor, the bottom of _Nazjatar,_ paralyzed, _drowning…_

_Click clack click—_

He snatched all the beads in his hand, throttling their motion and nearly ripping them from their strings. He heard the shopkeeper inhale through her teeth. Beside him, Flynn flinched noticeably. 

For a long, uncomfortable moment, Mathias couldn’t hear anything but the sound of his own heavy breaths. 

_“Mattie…”_ Flynn tried again. This time his voice was close— _too_ close. 

“You said you were starving,” Mathias said, attempting to sound casual, but his voice was all wrong. Too fragile and too many edges. Broken glass. 

“I am…” Flynn admitted. “And you must be too…?” 

“Mm.” Mathias wasn’t hungry at all, at this point, but it was easier to agree. 

He opened his fist and let all the beads loose, carefully enough that they didn’t start their wretched dance again. 

“Our apologies for disturbing you,” he offered the Pandaren, slowly backing away from the stall and dipping his head in what he hoped was a suitably respectful gesture. 

Then he spun on his heels and bolted. 

Flynn fell in quickly beside him, looming again at his shoulder. 

“What was _that_ about?” he asked, clearly trying to be lighthearted about it, but still sounding too concerned for Mathias to bear. 

“Nothing,” Mathias muttered. “Nevermind it.” 

He was speaking to himself just as much as to Flynn. His heart was still beating in his ears, and his fresh shirt clung to his back in cold sweat. He hadn’t been seized by panic so intense since the months immediately following the Broken Shore. He’d thought himself past these sorts of episodes. It was infuriating to learn that he very much wasn’t. 

“... are you okay?” 

“Yes.”

“Hmm. Why don’t I believe you?” Flynn tried the teasing route. “Do you want to get out of these crowds? Sit down for a spell, maybe?”

“No,” he said, reflexively. Truth be told he desperately wanted to forego dinner, retreat to the apartment, and sit alone in silence until he no longer felt flayed raw. 

“I could find you a drink? Something to take the edge off—” 

“I’m _fine_ , Flynn.” 

“If it was about the joke, I—”

“I said _nevermind it!”_ Mathias snapped.

He didn’t even have time to regret it before Flynn swung ahead of him, grabbed him by the wrists and hauled him bodily into a gap between two tents.

“I _am_ going to mind it!” he said, with a storm swelling in the softest tones of his voice, and thundering in the grey blue of his eyes. “I am, because _something_ set you off back there, and I reckon it was me, and I’d rather never do it again, if it’s all the same to you!” 

If any other creature in all the Nether had dared to grab him in the middle of a market, Mathias would have bathed the cobblestones in their blood. The instinct sat in his spine like a loaded spring, aching in the tendons of his arms, and beating through his wrists in Flynn’s hands. But his grip was unlike any restraint Mathias had ever faced: fierce, but not violent—a captain holding tight to a ship’s wheel in a gale. 

For the longest moment Mathias could only stare at him, sick and trembling with adrenaline, his mind collapsing under the weight of a hundred thoughts he couldn’t seem to organize, and his jaw quivering with the start of a hundred words, none of them correct. 

_This is wrong,_ Mathias thought, cold and confused, as if Flynn had just hauled him out the harbor. _This is all wrong,_ the feeling consumed him but he couldn’t make sense of it. He flexed his fingers, curling them into fists, then releasing them. It felt like the only thing he knew how to do, as if he were some kind of Titan automaton stuck in a loop. He did it again, and again, wanting to feel the blood in his hands, wanting Flynn to let go, wanting Flynn to understand, wanting— _wanting…_

Flynn was close enough that Mathias could feel the pounding of his heart, the steady rush of his breath from his nose, the heat radiating from his body through his clothes. He balled his hands into fists again.

Flynn’s eyes left Mathias’ face to watch the gesture, carefully tracking every movement of his fingers as if Mathias were speaking to him in code. Maybe he was. It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d attempted to communicate in a language he didn’t entirely understand. 

He watched Flynn swallow, watched his eyebrows knit themselves, watched the storm subside and leave his features soft again… 

The next time Mathias flexed his fingers Flynn’s hands swept up and gathered them, tangled them in his own, and tugged Mathias against his chest. 

It shattered through the ice block in Mathias’ mind and he collapsed there, burying his face in the shearling collar of Flynn’s coat, exhausted beyond shame or pretense. Flynn’s hand carded through his hair. The other crept back to its earlier spot against his lower back; this time it stayed. 

He let out what might have been every breath he’d ever held, and dissolved into a sanctuary he’d never expected to find. The captain’s thumb brushed up and down the base of his spine through his shirt, stroking the same few vertebrae again and again. He fixated on the sensation until the market faded from existence— until _he_ all but faded from existence. 

“Had a day, did you?” Flynn asked. His voice was low, and calm. 

“What gave it away?” Mathias replied, dryly. 

“Oh, you know, just uh, _everything,”_ Flynn said. His fingers kneaded at the nape of Mathias neck, coarse, but warm, and persistent. Like everything else about the man, honestly… 

“I don’t understand how you laugh about it…” Mathias admitted, searching with his fingers through the scarf around Flynn’s neck until he found the seashell on its cord. He pressed his fingers along its jagged shapes—like the wards of a skeleton key—to distract himself from the words he was saying. “Dying, I mean… especially after your mother…” 

Flynn’s embrace tightened briefly—something between a squeeze and a wince. 

“Well, it’s either laugh or cry, isn’t it?” Flynn asked. “And I reckon laughing at the last hand you’re dealt is a bit different than laughing at the fate of somebody you love…” 

“I suppose…” Mathias said, quietly. He honestly had no idea what to do with those words, nor what they implied about Flynn’s feelings about himself— and _definitely_ not what they implied about his own feelings for the man. 

He was saved from having to grapple with anyone’s feelings by Flynn’s stomach, which chose that moment to growl with the intensity of a shapeshifting worgen. 

“Well _that_ was impolite,” Flynn remarked, sounding scandalized. 

“We’d really better put some food in you soon…” 

“I would not complain if you did,” Flynn admitted. “Are you alright, though?” 

Mathias withdrew just enough to press a kiss to Flynn’s scruff. 

“I will be,” he whispered. “Thank you…” 

“For what? Snatching you off the street?” Flynn laughed, sheepish, and Mathias could feel his cheek heat against his lips. “I was half sure that was going to be the stupidest decision of my life, if I’m completely honest…” 

“It _was_ rather brazen. But I’d expect nothing less from you,” Mathias told him, “And for what it’s worth…” 

He dangled the punchline as bait as he slipped Flynn’s grasp and stepped back into the street. He knew if he didn’t keep them both moving, Flynn would probably never get food. 

“For what _what’s_ worth?” Flynn asked, clearly baffled as much by the construction of his own sentence as he had been by Mathias’ cliffhanger. _“... What?!”_

“What?” Mathias echoed him, not bothering to hide the smirk threatening his lips. 

“Tides, you are _such_ a handful,” Flynn accused, warmly. 

“That makes two of us, I guess,” said Mathias.

He nudged his hand against Flynn’s as it dangled at his side, and re-entangled their fingers just to prove it. 

He hid the spectacle away in the folds of his cloak, still wary of prying eyes. But there was frankly no hiding the ebullience of the man beside him. He didn’t even need to look at Flynn to feel the way he was beaming. He practically dragged Mathias down the alley in a burst of renewed enthusiasm, and Mathias let it happen. 

“Ah, look at this! _Smell_ this!” Flynn exclaimed, when they rounded the last corner and finally joined the small crowd congregated at the Yaungol brazier. 

It was an impressive, arcing display, situated off in its own little corner of the market so as not to threaten any of the other tents with its open, dancing flames. Two younger male Yaungol were hard at work with a clatter of tongs and knives and skewers, roasting just about anything one could think of, from fresh-caught fish, to Stormsong lamb and Sholazar Shoveltusk, and every vegetable ever harvested in the Pandaren heartlands. 

A full menu was written out in colorful chalk on a blackboard behind the brazier, nearly four feet tall and twice as wide, though it was difficult to read through the thick, intoxicating smoke that enveloped the entire area.

“I have been looking forward to this _all day,”_ Flynn confessed, rubbing his hands together. 

Mathias still hadn’t managed to recover his appetite, and the low visibility around the brazier threatened to spur his anxiety yet again. But there was a part of him that had been looking forward to this all day too, and he was determined to make the best of it. 

Flynn followed his nose straight to the fire, and went about selecting his supper purely based on sight and smell. It seemed like a popular technique amongst the crowd. But Mathias squinted at the menu instead, not because it was actually helping him decide what to eat, but simply because it was fascinating. 

Each item was listed three times, first in Common, then captioned in Pandaren and Taur-ahe. He relished any opportunity to expand his vocabulary, and it was rare to discover an artifact where Alliance and Horde languages coexisted so effortlessly. He’d be hard-pressed to find such a thing in the Stormwind Trade District. 

He was in the middle of memorizing the Taur-ahe word for ‘duck’ when Flynn’s voice bounced brightly over the sizzle and chatter around them. 

“Look, Mattie, they serve _Mogushan Mules!”_

Mathias had no idea what a _Mogushan Mule_ was, and by the name alone he would have guessed it was some kind of pack horse—or, in the present context, a type of steak. 

But Flynn’s finger led his eyes to a second, smaller chalkboard: a drink menu. 

_Kun Lai vodka. Krasarang ginger beer. Lime. Local mint leaf. Cool & refreshing w/ a spicy kick! _

“They even have the little copper cups!” Flynn enthused, sounding more like a ten-year-old at an ice cream parlor than a slightly alcoholic thirty-something. “Want one? They match your hair!” 

It sounded strange but not altogether unpalatable, which was more than Mathias could say for some of the beverages he’d watched Flynn swallow. But he wasn’t in the habit of drinking anything he didn’t either mix or open himself, and after an afternoon laced with murkscale venom, anything involving the word _Krasarang_ left his stomach in knots. 

He shook his head, and Flynn frowned. 

“Right then. Just one Mogushan Mule,” he heard Flynn tell the towering Yaungol taking his order, “Rather into my ginger mules, aren’t I? Granted, one’s a fair bit more stubborn than the other. Much harder to swallow. Bloody handsome, though.” 

Mathias stomach literally _flipped_ at that, and he smeared a hand over his face, turning away as the Yaungol snorted something akin to a laugh. 

There wasn’t really anything resembling a line, so Mathias cut carefully through the crowd and approached the tiny Yaungol taking people’s payment. Her horns were barely budding on the top of her head, and still covered in velvet. 

_“HellohowcanIhelpyou?”_ she blurted nervously in Common. She had to be the baby of the family, helping out because things had gotten busy. Mathias smiled at her gently. 

“I’ll have a skewer of the lamb and one of the root vegetables, please,” he said, in passable enough Taur-ahe that the little girl’s eyes widened, delighted. 

“Pa- _pa!_ ” she said, turning to a much larger Yaungol chopping turnips behind her. “This one speaks our tongue!” 

“I heard him,” the father replied, still chopping, “Why don’t you go get him what he asked for? It’s rude to point at people.” 

“Sorry!” The girl hastily withdrew her finger and rushed off to fetch his food. 

The elder Yaungol eyed Mathias warily as he waited, and Mathias couldn’t blame him. Any human who had bothered to learn Taur-ahe had to have had some _reason_ to learn it, and most of the imaginable reasons weren’t exactly savory— nor were they _wrong._

“She’s very helpful,” Mathias said, hoping to disarm him. 

“She’s learning,” the father grunted in reply. 

The little girl returned shortly thereafter with his skewers tucked neatly in a little basket woven of reeds. She scribbled some notes on a piece of parchment. 

“That’s twelve silver!” she said, in Taur-ahe.

Mathias nodded, then pulled two gold coins out of his pocket and placed them in her palm. 

She looked at the money, then back up at him, anxious and confused. 

“No. Just twelve silver,” she said again in Common, just in case, but Mathias just shook his head and grinned at her.

“That’s for my food, but also for _his,_ ” he said, crouching down till he was at her height and pointing across the brazier at Flynn, whose basket was quickly amassing a small mountain of meat. “Will that cover it?” 

“Yes, but he eats a _whole lot_ ,” she commented. 

“That he does,” Mathias said. And then, before he could help himself: “He’s lucky he’s cute.” 

The little Yaungol gasped and giggled at him. 

He let her get back to work before her father could scold her, and wandered away from the heat of the flames. 

Leaning against the stone wall of the steps that led up to the second tier of the district, he nibbled appraisingly at a bit of parsnip at the end of one of his skewers. It was hearty and well spiced, and delicious enough to finally make his stomach do something other than quease and dance, and he sighed into the next bite, thankful. 

Flynn finally succeeded in getting what looked like one of everything on the menu and made his way over to pay for it, and Mathias watched his eyebrows lift as the little girl informed him it was already covered. Then she said something else, and the captain’s cheeks glowed rosy enough to spot through the smoke. 

_Gotcha,_ he thought. He turned his attention back to his vegetables. 

_“Apparently,”_ Flynn announced, drawing out the word dramatically as he approached. _“Somebody_ back at that brazier said I was _cute_.” 

“Is that right?” Mathias asked, taking the last bit of a chunk of carrot between his teeth and tugging it off the skewer. He chewed and swallowed, thoughtfully. “That has to have been a mistake.” 

“Costly one too,” Flynn agreed. “They paid for my meal.” 

“Outrageous,” Mathias deadpanned. “That’d put a man in debt for months…” 

He turned to wander, but Flynn threw an arm around his shoulders, narrowly avoiding dowsing Mathias with his _Mogushan Mule_. It sloshed in front of his chest in its little copper mug. 

“If you want to flirt with me, just _flirt_ with me, Spymaster…” he purred, as if he _hadn’t_ been running tricks of the trade on Mathias with every soul he’d spoken to that evening. His words were all warm breath and bristly whiskers against Mathias’ ear, and he might as well have picked Mathias up and flung him onto the brazier, for the way his body suddenly blazed. 

Light, the man was _unfair…_

“Not here…” He shrugged Flynn off before he could completely demolish every notion of discretion Mathias had ever possessed. He wasn’t naive; anybody even _half_ paying attention this evening would have already gleaned more than enough about the nature of their affair. But there was still a measure of difference between holding a man’s hand and letting him manhandle you in a public establishment... 

“C’mon. I know the perfect place,” Flynn said, taking the lead. 

“You _know the perfect place,_ ” Mathias repeated, skeptically. “... to eat dinner?” He gestured to their handfuls of food and drink. 

“Of _course_ to eat dinner!” Flynn said, all ridiculous bluster. “What did _you_ think I meant?” He turned and beckoned Mathias to follow with a tilt of the head and a glimmer in his eye.

 _Unfair._ Mathias sighed and shook his head, then followed willingly. 

Flynn led them out of the market and down the steps toward the ferry docks, but stopped halfway and nodded at the retainer wall. 

About fifteen feet out from the wooden steps, with nothing but the sea swirling beneath it, Mathias spotted an alcove in the stones, likely for storing buoys and rope and other supplies for docked vessels. It looked barely large enough for two grown men, and the only way to access it seemed to be a makeshift set of hand-and-footholds worn into the rocks. 

“Never tried this with my hands full before,” Flynn laughed. “We might need to get creative. Up for a challenge, roofwalker?” 

“Always,” said Mathias, grinning. 

Eventually, between Mathias’ strategic thinking, Flynn’s resourcefulness, a spare bit of rope, and Flynn’s kerchief, they were able to transport every bit of food and drink over to the alcove without anything—or anyone— taking a plunge into the harbor. 

They sat side-by-side with their legs dangling down toward the waves, staring off at the last embers of light on the horizon, and watching the lamps flicker on in the ship cabins. 

“Not bad, eh?” Flynn asked, with his mouth half full of meat.

“Not bad at all.” 

“Used to sleep here as a kid sometimes,” he admitted. “It always made me feel safe. Granted, I also recall it being a bit bigger.” He thumped his knuckles on the stones that hung barely an inch above his head, then nudged Mathias’ cheek, grinning. “But you fit just fine, eh?”

Mathias was once again left thinking about Flynn as a child, tucked shivering in this very hole with nothing but a bed of dried seaweed and a battered buoy for a pillow. When he’d said: _I know the perfect place,_ Mathias had all but assumed his intentions were indelicate. But no, Flynn’s first order of business had been to bring Mathias someplace _safe._

It was strange, to be hidden away in a little nook like this, yet still feel so _seen._

He slid a hand against Flynn’s leg, softly squeezing his knee. 

“You fit with me.” 

“Not for long, if I devour all this.” Flynn gestured at his pile of barbecue. “You’re gonna have to help me one way or another— either by eating some of these skewers or rolling me home.” 

Mathias just smiled and shook his head, happy enough to keep nibbling at his own lamb. 

“What did you do today, that you’ve built up such an appetite?” he inquired, curiously. 

“Oh, this and that,” Flynn shrugged. He chewed contemplatively for a while. “Ran some errands to prepare the _Arva_ for Friday. Secured a little boat for tomorrow…” 

“A boat…” Mathias blinked at him, momentarily clueless. “For what?”

Flynn reacted as if he’d been struck. 

“You forgot…” he said, swallowing. His voice was terribly flat, and Mathias’ heart plummeted. 

“No! I…” He winced as their entire conversation from the night before slammed back into his head like a wave hitting the wall beneath him. He sighed. _“Yes,_ I did, briefly. But I remember now, and—”

“If you don’t have the time—”

“No, I do—” 

“Or if you don’t actually want to go—”

“I _do!”_ he insisted, clutching fiercely at Flynn’s arm. _“Light_ , Flynn, I do. I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t.” The very last of his adrenaline abandoned him, and he buried his face in Flynn’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’ve just had _such a long day…”_

Flynn exhaled slowly, then picked one of Mathias’ hands off of his arm and took it between both of his own, stroking his knuckles. 

“Want to talk about it?” he asked, delicately. Then, after a moment: “ _Can_ you talk about it?” 

The answer to both of those questions should have been a resounding _no._ But Mathias found it more and more difficult by the day to determine what to share or withhold from the man. It would have been one thing if Flynn were some doe-eyed civilian. But he very much wasn’t, and the truth of the matter was that Flynn frequently already knew more than he let on… 

Chances were, if Mathias simply told him that the Irontide were regrouping and plotting to kill him, Flynn would shrug and ask him what else was new— or maybe he’d just laugh again. And that made it so much harder to tell him. Because it suddenly wasn’t about the Irontide at all, or even about Flynn, really. It was entirely about _him._

About him, and how he had no idea how to look a man in the eyes and say: _I killed four people today, because I couldn’t even begin to tolerate the thought of losing you. I’m terrified I might do anything, not to lose you._

He couldn’t say it, so he didn’t. Instead, he offered up a summary of his frustrating exchange with Shandris, and then tiptoed around the edges of the smuggling situation. He confessed to the murders, but stopped far short of offering any hint of a motive. 

Fortunately, Flynn wasn’t the type to press him on that sort of thing. 

“Let me get this straight,” he said, after Mathias trailed off. He paused to practically inhale a skewer of smoked salmon. “You’re telling me these blokes are smuggling guns… that shoot _pearls_ … with _wine.”_

“Essentially.” 

“What’ll they dream up next, eh? Bombs that burst into five-course blood elf banquets?” 

Mathias snorted. 

“Imagine it, though,” Flynn insisted. “Just when you think the fireworks are over, dessert shows up, and some tetchy pyromaniac explodes over a _literal_ trifle…” 

“You’re ridiculous,” Mathias sighed, even as he allowed himself to lean against Flynn’s arm again. 

“Hmm. Speaking of banquets…” Flynn nodded at his basket of skewers again. “I wasn’t joking, you know. You barely ate anything. Help me out.”

“I’m really not hungry…” 

“Your mind’s fooling you, mate. And besides, you’d better stock up on strength if you plan to help me sail tomorrow.” 

“I’m perfectly capable of helping you sail.” 

“At least give this one a taste, eh? It’s _incredible._ ”

Before Mathias could register what was happening, Flynn had plucked a cube of some kind of meat off of a skewer and was holding it in front of his mouth. 

Mathias blinked at it, and then at Flynn.

“... what … is it?” he asked, his pulse kicking up for reasons he couldn’t explain. 

“‘Round here it’s known as _fencing fish._ Comes from up near the Fjords, in Northrend.”

“I’m… not very fond of fish....” Mathias sincerely hoped that fact wouldn’t eventually become a point of contention in their relationship. 

“I know, I know. But this one’s different. Holds its shape—and its marinade. I coulda told you it was chicken and you’d’ve believed me.”

He waggled the bit of fish in front of Mathias lips and brought his other hand up to catch the dripping oil. His fingertips grazed Mathias’ goatee. 

Mathias really doubted that was an accident, somehow. 

“I _promise_ you’ll love it.”

Mathias glowered at him, but Flynn had him quite literally cornered. And so, with a sigh, he leaned in and carefully bit into one corner of the cube.

His senses were immediately inundated by a mouthwatering blend of salt and fat and citrus and herbs. Flynn was right, the taste and texture were both unlike any fish Mathias had ever suffered, whether here or on the mainland.

“Oh… that _is_ good…” 

“So stop pecking at it,” Flynn insisted, “My hand is getting a bit tired, here.” 

“This was _entirely_ your idea,” Mathias reminded him, before polishing off the rest of the fish. 

Then, before Flynn could pull away, and before Mathias could overthink himself into paralysis, he grabbed hold of Flynn’s hand and sucked his fingers clean as well. 

A tiny, choked moan of surprise escaped Flynn’s throat, and it sent smoldering heat through Mathias’ blood. He was certain he was absolutely crimson. 

Flynn cradled his jaw, gently smoothing his wet thumb across Mathias’ lower lip as it slid from his mouth. The worn weave of his cutoff gloves snagged against his five o’clock shadow. 

“Tidemother,” he laughed, suddenly a bit hoarse. “Where did _that_ come from?” 

“Don’t even _try_ to pretend like you weren’t hoping for that the entire time.”

“If you say so.” Flynn’s eyes were dark, and glimmered with mischief and a hundred harbor lights. He looked as though he might devour Mathias whole. 

Mathias decided to save him the trouble, and kissed him. He tasted like salt and lemon and molasses and ginger beer, and his hands went immediately for Mathias’ hair, as if they were always just waiting and waiting for a chance to mess with it. He deconstructed Flynn’s ponytail in retaliation—or at least that's what he told himself it was. Flynn just laughed and pulled him in for another kiss. 

Eventually, Flynn rearranged himself until he was leaning against the wall of the alcove. He tugged Mathias into his arms and coerced him through sheer charisma into sharing his skewers, one by one, until his stomach and his heart were both full to bursting. 

“Want to know what _I_ think?” Flynn asked, out of the blue, rousing Mathias from the cusp of a food coma. 

“I get the sense I’m about to find out either way,” he replied, smiling to himself. 

“Mmm. I think the whole scheme’s a front.” 

“The Yaungols?” Mathias frowned. 

“What? No. The rest of it. Pearls, wine, weapons. Alleria.”

Mathias’ eyes snapped open in alarm.

“What in Light are you talking about?” 

_“I_ think the whole reason you keep disappearing is because you’re tangled up in a _glitter_ gang _,”_ Flynn announced. “Sylvanas is just some code word for the latest shimmery substance on the market. Last night Alleria dropped by to give you a sample, and you were so delighted by what it looked like on me, that you went all the way down to Tiragarde to pay for more. They wouldn’t give you the whole stash, so you just killed them all in a heady rage and stole it…”

Mathias was sitting up at this point, staring at Flynn in bewilderment as he gleefully produced the most elaborately _ridiculous_ string of sentences Mathias had ever heard. 

“The night elves don’t want to help you because they see how zealous you are and they’re afraid you’ll steal the moondust right out of their moonwells. The worgen don’t want to help you because they’ll never get the stuff out of their fur if they get near you… How am I doing?” 

“I’ll give your plot fabrication skills a solid B,” Mathias said, barely managing to keep his voice level. “But you have absolutely no evidence to support your claims.” 

“Except I do! I received this semi-anonymous tip this morning, in fact.” He pulled Mathias’ note out of his pocket and unfolded it, clearing his throat before reading it aloud in his Trademark Mainlander-Trolling Voice: “ _It suits you, you know. The glitter. I might need to make this particular mistake more frequently…”_

“I believe I also told you to burn that immediately.” Mathias made to snatch the note but Flynn was quicker, and held it out over the water, just out of reach. 

“Ah, maybe. Good thing your cheeks are blazing so nice and hot right now. Don’t know where else I’d find the fire…” 

“It’s _not glitter,”_ Mathias complained. “It’s _rendorei tracing powder._ It—”

“It _sparkles,_ is what it does. On my _arse cheeks,”_ he grinned. “Just admit it, Mattie. You have a fetish. Nothing to be embarrassed about. We’ve all got one.”

“Light, you’re _impossible_.” Mathias dragged his hands over his face, charmed delirious. 

“No, not impossible. Just a challenge,” Flynn said, with that leviathan grin of his. He leaned close and kissed Mathias’ cheek. “And I believe you said you’re always up for one.” Then his whiskers were back tickling Mathias’ ear again. “Up for one right now?” 

Mathias turned his face until his nose crashed into Flynn’s, kissing him fiercely.

 _“_ Take me home first, Captain,” he growled, as Flynn’s lower lip slipped from between his teeth. 

“Killjoy,” Flynn teased. “But if you insist, love.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to be a 2-paragraph aside, and then it turned into a full-chapter character study. My bad. 
> 
> So sorry for the delay between chapters. I chose the absolute worst time to begin posting this fic. I am 100% *that* person, and I beg forgiveness. >.<
> 
> Mother of Pearl comes from an [old story about Cleopatra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Banquet_of_Cleopatra)
> 
> At the toy vendor, Norgannon's Cradle is a [Newton's Cradle.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_cradle)
> 
> If it wasn't entirely obvious, I was listening to Coldplay's [Spies](https://open.spotify.com/track/2mLgOcRkEgq89j8WstUpui?si=KuJX5MuwR3ykNWH_nfMX6Q) while writing this entire chapter, because, yeah, I'm 100% that person. 
> 
> I am in love with Mathias being in love with birds. Mathias + Birds = OTP  
> .... sorry Flynn, you're cute too! You'll get your boat date!


End file.
